6. Variables

The next basic building block we need to look at are variables. Common Lisp supports two kinds of variables: lexical and dynamic.1 These two types correspond roughly to “local” and “global” variables in other languages. However, the correspondence is only approximate. On one hand, some languages’ “local” variables are in fact much like Common Lisp’s dynamic variables.2 And on the other, some languages’ local variables are lexically scoped without providing all the capabilities provided by Common Lisp’s lexical variables. In particular, not all languages that provide lexically scoped variables support closures.

To make matters a bit more confusing, many of the forms that deal with variables can be used with both lexical and dynamic variables. So I’ll start by discussing a few aspects of Lisp’s variables that apply to both kinds and then cover the specific characteristics of lexical and dynamic variables. Then I’ll discuss Common Lisp’s general-purpose assignment operator, **SETF**, which is used to assign new values to variables and just about every other place that can hold a value.