3.2.4 Literal Objects in Compiled Files

The functions eval and compile are required to ensure that literal objects referenced within the resulting interpreted or compiled code objects are the same as the corresponding objects in the source code. compile-file, on the other hand, must produce a compiled file that, when loaded with load, constructs the objects defined by the source code and produces references to them.

In the case of compile-file, objects constructed by load of the compiled file cannot be spoken of as being the same as the objects constructed at compile time, because the compiled file may be loaded into a different Lisp image than the one in which it was compiled. This section defines the concept of similarity which relates objects in the evaluation environment to the corresponding objects in the run-time environment.

The constraints on literal objects described in this section apply only to compile-file; eval and compile do not copy or coalesce constants.