Re: Redefinition of CL Functions

[Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@ALDERAAN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Tue, 14 Apr 87 07:44:30 pst
    From: Jim Kempf <kempf%hplabsc@hplabs.HP.COM>

    While I understand the concern about redefinition causing code
    to become nonportable, I think a case can be made for redefinition
    in experimental systems.

However, as Rob explained in a recent message, the only reason for the
Common Lisp specification to provide for anything is in order to make
sure that doing the thing is guaranteed to be portable across all
implementations of Common Lisp.  If it's not going to be portable, then
there's no point in putting it in the Common Lisp specification.  If it
is supposed to be portable, there are all the serious problems that have
been pointed out in recent mail.  There's nothing wrong with a particular
implementation having some kind of feature that allows redefinition of
built-in functions/macros/etc.