Re: Lexical and Dynamic Scope

[Aurélien Aptel]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 9:47 PM, Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> wrote:
> But: is the stack of names global? Howcome all the Lisp
> don't get crazy from other Lisp changing "its"
> variables? But come to think of it, I very seldom use
> variables - I use `let's, and perhaps that is both a
> shield from interference and doesn't change the global
> name stack?

In dynamic scoping, each time you nest a let binding to same symbol
you add to this variable stack. When you take the value of a symbol
the value comes from the top of the stack of this symbol.

    (defvar a 1)
    (defun my-a ()
      "Return current value of a (top top the stack)"
      a)

    (my-a)
    => 1

    (let ((a 2)) ;; push 2 in the `a' stack
      ;; we usually say: a is shadowed in this scope
      (my-a))
    => 2

    ;; at the end of let scope, 2 is popped from the stack
    (my-a)
    => 1

    (list
     (my-a)

     (let ((a 2))
       (my-a))

     (let ((a 3))
       (let ((a 4))
         (my-a)))

     (my-a))
    => (1 2 4 1)