*load-documentation*

This variable controls whether documentation strings associated with symbols naming Lisp objects (operators, constants, etc.) will in fact be stored in Allegro CL, and thus available using the documentation generic function, or will be ignored, and thus not be available at all.

Documentation strings are useful, but they take up space in the Lisp heap, resulting in larger images. This variable gives programmers control over the handling of documentation strings. Consider the following example, showing the different behavior when this variable is true and nil:

cl-user(75): (setq *load-documentation* t)
t
cl-user(76): (defun foo (x) "Doc string for FOO"
		    (+ x 1))
foo
cl-user(77): (documentation 'foo 'function)
"Doc string for FOO"
cl-user(78): (setq *load-documentation* nil)
nil
cl-user(79): (defun foo (x) "Doc string for FOO"
		    (+ x 1))
foo
cl-user(80): (documentation 'foo 'function)
nil
cl-user(81): 

The value of this variable also affects loading files containing definitions with doc strings. If the value of this variable is true, the doc strings are loaded and stored. If the value is nil, they are not.

The initial value of this variable is determined when the image is built. Its initial value is true in images included with the distribution. For images created with build-lisp-image and generate-application, the value in the newly created image is the value of the preserve-documentation keyword argument. That argument defaults to t in calls to build-lisp-image and defaults to nil in calls to generate-application. (The theory is that generate-application is used to produce application distributions and documentation strings are less useful in applications.)

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This page was not revised from the 8.1 page.
Created 2010.1.21.