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3.4.1 Variable Value Availability

The value of a variable may be unavailable to the debugger in portions of the program where Common Lisp says that the variable is defined. If a variable value is not available, the debugger will not let you read or write that variable. With one exception, the debugger will never display an incorrect value for a variable. Rather than displaying incorrect values, the debugger tells you the value is unavailable.

The one exception is this: if you interrupt (e.g., with ^C) or if there is an unexpected hardware error such as “bus error” (which should only happen in unsafe code), then the values displayed for arguments to the interrupted frame might be incorrect.⁴ This exception applies only to the interrupted frame: any frame farther down the stack will be fine.

The value of a variable may be unavailable for these reasons:

• The value of the debug optimization quality may have omitted debug information needed to determine whether the variable is available. Unless a variable is an argument, its value will only be available when debug is at least 2.
• The compiler did lifetime analysis and determined that the value was no longer needed, even though its scope had not been exited. Lifetime analysis is inhibited when the debug optimization quality is 3.
• The variable’s name is an uninterned symbol (gensym). To save space, the compiler only dumps debug information about uninterned variables when the debug optimization quality is 3.
• The frame’s location is unknown (see unknown-locations) because the debugger was entered due to an interrupt or unexpected hardware error. Under these conditions the values of arguments will be available, but might be incorrect. This is the exception above.
• The variable was optimized out of existence. Variables with no reads are always optimized away, even in the interpreter. The degree to which the compiler deletes variables will depend on the value of the compile-speed optimization quality, but most source-level optimizations are done under all compilation policies.

Since it is especially useful to be able to get the arguments to a function, argument variables are treated specially when the speed optimization quality is less than 3 and the debug quality is at least 1. With this compilation policy, the values of argument variables are almost always available everywhere in the function, even at unknown locations. For non-argument variables, debug must be at least 2 for values to be available, and even then, values are only available at known locations.