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The info database provides a functional interface to global information about named things in CMUCL. Information is considered to be global if it must persist between invocations of the compiler. The use of a functional interface eliminates the need for the compiler to worry about the details of the representation. The info database also handles the need to multiple “global” environments, which makes it possible to change something in the compiler without trashing the running Lisp environment.
The info database contains arbitrary lisp values, addressed by a combination of name, class and type. The Name is an EQUAL-thing which is the name of the thing that we are recording information about. Class is the kind of object involved: typical classes are Function, Variable, Type. A type names a particular piece of information within a given class. Class and Type are symbols, but are compared with STRING=.