I don't want to spray gasoline on what looks like the beginning of a
flame war, but the `dynamic' behavior of Scheme variables shouldn't be
confused with dynamic scoping.

Pierre Weis wrote/écrivait (Nov 03 2000, 05:56PM +0100):
> Scheme has lexical scoping <EM>locally</EM>. It has dynamic binding
> globally,

> I find in the R5RS, a clear distinction between top level
> definitions that are said to be equivalent to assigments

That's because undefined identifiers are considered to be bound to
global locations. Therefore, a global definition is considered as an
assignment to such a location. This is where the difference comes
from.

To be sure that Scheme uses lexical binding for both global and local
identifiers, consider this simple example:

; -----------
(define (f x) (+ (g x) 1))

(f 1)   ; => Error: g is undefined

(let ((g (lambda (z) z)))
  (f 1)) ; => Error: g is still undefined, although it's avaliable
         ;           from the dynamic env

(define (g x) x)

(f 1)    ; => 2
; -----------

Under dynamic scoping, the second call (f 1) would succeed, since g is
available in the dynamic context. This is how ynamic Lisp would
behave.

In Scheme, when f is defined, g is lexically bound to a location. That
location is assigned when g gets defined (or redefined).

-- Michel

No, I'm not here.