Bindings and Scoping

LFE is a Lisp-2 and has separate namespaces for variables and functions/macros. Both variables and functions/macros are lexically scoped. Variables are bound by lambda, match-lambda and let. Functions are bound by top-level defun, flet and fletrec. Macros are bound by top-level defmacro/defsyntax and by macrolet/syntaxlet.

When searching for functions, both name and arity are used. A macro is considered to have any arity and will match all functions with that name. While this is not consistent with either Scheme (or CL) it is simple, usually easy to understand, and fits Erlang quite well. It does, however, require using (funcall func arg ... ) like CL to call lambdas/match-lambdas (funs) bound to variables.

Core solves this by having separate bindings and special to have only one apply:

• apply _F (...), and
• apply _F/3 ( a1, a2, a3 )