[racket] Why internal definitions?

From: Shriram Krishnamurthi (sk at cs.brown.edu)
Date: Wed Nov 16 08:12:27 EST 2011

> Your question suggests that you come from a teaching language
> background where we introduce only local definitions. In ISL
> and ISL+lambda, the use of local makes it easier to move global
> transformations into a local scope and vice versa. Most importantly,
> these movement preserve the exact semantics of the definitions,
> including errors.

Well, internal define could have done this just as well.  It is
because of the historic Scheme legacy that internal define meant
something else, so it was necessary to invent local.

But given where we are now, is it fair to say that the use of local
make_s_ is easier, rather than _made_?

Shriram


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