Talk:Dynamic variable

What are "dynamic variables"?

The first reference for this page, which is also the "Dynamic Variables" paper in the "Further reading" section is talking about dynamically scoped variables. To quote it abstract:

Most programming languages use static scope rules for associating uses of identifiers with their declarations. Static scope helps catch errors at compile time, and it can be implemented efficiently. Some popular languages—Perl, Tcl, TeX, and Postscript—use dynamic scope, because dynamic scope works well for variables that “customize” the execution environment, for example. Programmers must simulate dynamic scope to implement this kind of usage in statically scoped languages. This paper describes the design and implementation of imperative language constructs for introducing and referencing dynamically scoped variables—dynamic variables for short. The design is a minimalist one, because dynamic variables are best used sparingly, much like exceptions. The facility does, however, cater to the typical uses for dynamic scope, and it provides a cleaner mechanism for so-called thread-local variables. A particularly simple implementation suffices for languages without exception handling. For languages with exception handling, a more efficient implementation builds on existing compiler infrastructure. Exception handling can be viewed as a control construct with dynamic scope. Likewise, dynamic variables are a data construct with dynamic scope.

However, the first type of dynamic variable listed in Dynamic variable § Types of dynamic variables is just an ordinary automatic variable with lexical scope. Guy Harris (talk) 18:15, 5 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Guy Harris Good point. While I was looking into this reference, I didn't catch it was just talking about the dynamic scope of automatic variables. I had added the paper to show how the design of dynamic variables can be defined in any programming languages. I'll remove that first type now. Sddarealone (talk) 16:48, 7 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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