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# Compilation

Function: COMPILE (name &optional (definition nil))
  Package:LISP

  If DEFINITION is NIL, NAME must be the name of a not-yet-compiled function. In this case, COMPILE compiles the function, installs the compiled function as the global function definition of NAME, and returns NAME. If DEFINITION is non-NIL, it must be a lambda expression and NAME must be a symbol. COMPILE compiles the lambda expression, installs the compiled function as the function definition of NAME, and returns NAME. There is only one exception for this: If NAME is NIL, then the compiled function is not installed but is simply returned as the value of COMPILE. In any case, COMPILE creates temporary files whose filenames are "gazonk***". By default, i.e. if :LEAVE-GAZONK is not supplied or is NIL, these files are automatically deleted after compilation.

Special Form: EVAL-WHEN
  Package:LISP

  Syntax:

      (eval-when ({situation}*) {form}*)

  A situation must be either COMPILE, LOAD, or EVAL. The interpreter evaluates only when EVAL is specified. If COMPILE is specified, FORMs are evaluated at compile time. If LOAD is specified, the compiler arranges so that FORMs be evaluated when the compiled code is loaded.

Function: COMPILE-FILE (input-pathname
  &key output-file (load nil) (message-file nil) ;GCL specific keywords: system-p c-debug c-file h-file data-file) Package:LISP

  Compiles the file specified by INPUT-PATHNAME and generates a fasl file specified by OUTPUT-FILE. If the filetype is not specified in INPUT-PATHNAME, then ".lsp" is used as the default file type for the source file. :LOAD specifies whether to load the generated fasl file after compilation. :MESSAGE-FILE specifies the log file for the compiler messages. It defaults to the value of the variable COMPILER:*DEFAULT-MESSAGE-FILE*. A non-NIL value of COMPILER::*COMPILE-PRINT* forces the compiler to indicate the form currently being compiled. More keyword parameters are accepted, depending on the version. Most versions of GCL can receive :O-FILE, :C-FILE, :H-FILE, and :DATA-FILE keyword parameters, with which you can control the intermediate files generated by the GCL compiler. Also :C-DEBUG will pass the -g flag to the C compiler.

  By top level forms in a file, we mean the value of *top-level-forms* after doing (TF form) for each form read from a file. We define TF as follows:

  (defun TF (x) (when (consp x) (setq x (macroexpand x)) (when (consp x) (cond ((member (car x) '(progn eval-when)) (mapcar 'tf (cdr x))) (t (push x *top-level-forms*))))))

  Among the common lisp special forms only DEFUN and DEFMACRO will cause actual native machine code to be generated. The rest will be specially treated in an init section of the .data file. This is done so that things like putprop,setq, and many other forms would use up space which could not be usefully freed, if we were to compile to native machine code. If you have other `ordinary' top level forms which you need to have compiled fully to machine code you may either set compiler::*COMPILE-ORDINARIES* to t, or put them inside a

  (PROGN 'COMPILE ...forms-which-need-to-be-compiled)

  The compiler will take each of them and make a temporary function which will be compiled and invoked once. It is permissible to wrap a (PROGN 'COMPILE ..) around the whole file. Currently this construction binds the compiler::*COMPILE-ORDINARIES* flag to t. Setting this flag globally to a non nil value to cause all top level forms to generate machine code. This might be useful in a system such as PCL, where a number of top level lambda expressions are given. Note that most common lisps will simply ignore the top level atom 'compile, since it has no side effects.

  Defentry, clines, and defcfun also result in machine code being generated.

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