Re: sending function arguments to recursive function calls

[Dmitry Gutov]

"Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> writes:
> Then you meant to write:
>
>     bar
>
> not:
>
>     baz
>

Right. Sorry.

>> It's ugly because this kind of code is hard to reason about and,
>> consequently, hard to modify. Suppose I want to rewrite `foo' (and
>> suppose it's longer than this one line).
>
> Yes. That's why you should adopt the CL convention of naming all the
> special variables (those with dynamic binding) with stars:
>

I agree it's a good convention in CL (and Clojure), but Elisp has its
own convention: name the variable starting with the package prefix.
Until we have real modularity, it should be good enough.

>> Can I rename `bar' to something else? 
>
> Yes.  You should name it *bar*, and declare it special locally.  Right,
> for now (declare (special *bar*)) has no effect in emacs lisp since it's
> the default, but it states your intent!

Yes, I think, currently only byte-compiler looks at it, and warns the
user when it sees undeclared variables.

>> No idea: to be absolutely sure,
>> I have to search the definitions of all functions that `foo' calls,
>> and if I find a `bar' reference in any of them, I'll now have to
>> search for any other functions that call them, etc. IOW, this makes
>> for terrible composability.
>
> Definitely.  That's why the default is lexical binding, and you have to
> declare specially variables with dynamic binding, either with declare
> special, or globally with defvar or defparameter.
>
>
>> The behavior is ugly because it allows the code to be written this way.
>>
>> A worse example is when `bar' is one of the arguments to `foo' (ugh).
>
> Global or local special declarations are still possible, even for
> parameters.

...in CL, right? Your earmuff example didn't work for me in Emacs with
lexical-binding t, `(declare (special *bar*))' doesn't replace the need
for `defvar'ing it.

I'm not sure how I feel about special local variables and parameters.
The problem with tracking down callers/callees graph applies to both of
these types, as far as I can tell, so each local variable of this kind
might as well be declared global.

During the few years I've been using Emacs, I think I've only used the
ability to change the value of a parameter in a caller function once,
deep inside the Helm codebase. Sure enough, in a few months, the caller
function code has changed, and my function broke.