[Sbcl-devel] Bug in COMPILE?

[<Mat...@t-...>]

The function COMPILE does not seem to handle macro definitions 
correctly.  Using sbcl 0.7.2 I get the following behavior:

* (defmacro foo () ''x)
FOO
* (foo)
X
* (compile 'foo)
FOO
NIL
NIL
* (foo)
debugger invoked on condition of type UNDEFINED-FUNCTION:
   The function FOO is undefined.

Within the debugger, you can type HELP for help. At any command prompt 
(within
the debugger or not) you can type (SB-EXT:QUIT) to terminate the SBCL
executable. The condition which caused the debugger to be entered is 
bound to
*DEBUG-CONDITION*. You can suppress this message by clearing
*DEBUG-BEGINNER-HELP-P*.

restarts:
   0: [ABORT   ] Reduce debugger level (leaving debugger, returning to 
toplevel).
   1: [TOPLEVEL] Restart at toplevel READ/EVAL/PRINT loop.
("varargs entry for #'(LAMBDA (&REST SB!C::ARGS) (DECLARE #) ...)")
0]

(I cannot currently bootstrap sbcl on my system, but the relevant code 
is not changed in sbcl 0.7.3)

The reason for this behavior is that COMPILE always compiles the 
FDEFINITION of the symbol and only then checks whether to install it as 
MACRO-FUNCTION or FDEFINITION.  According to the HyperSpec the behavior 
should be

"If a non-nil name is given, then the resulting compiled function 
replaces the existing function definition of name and the name is 
returned as the primary value; if name is a symbol that names a macro, 
its macro function is updated and the name is returned as the primary 
value."

The definition of /macro/ points to /macro name/:

"macro name n. a name for which macro-function returns true and which 
when used as the first element of a compound form identifies that form 
as a macro form."

Therefore I think that the correct fix would be to change the initial 
value for DEFINITION in the function COMPILE to

(defun compile (name &optional (definition (or (macro-function name) 

                                                (fdefinition name))))
   ...)

Regards

   Matthias