Re: Assignment no, dynamic scoping si (was: Re: RE: Wi

Gunther Schadow <gunther@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> So, what are the disadvantages of dynamic scoping?

Well, every LISP book i read warns that excessive use
of floating variables and reliance on dynamic binding
will lead to hard to find bugs.
That's exactly what i experienced: hours of hunting down
hard to find bugs originating for example in using a
variable name in a lambda expression fed to someone
else's code where it was used dynamically bound.

Apart from this, language developers went to static
scoping because this makes compilation and many optimisation
techniques easier or even possible.

I don't think the advantages of dynamic scoped variables
are worth the potential trouble. The worst i would have
avoided was writing some moded templates to pass down
parameters to the place where they were needed.

Regards
J.Pietschmann

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