But according to the current spec, ` need not expand into anything at all. What I am challenging is your assertion that there should be a single ("the") backquote object that ` always expands to.
It would be handy and add consistency (why is the expansion for quote defined but not the one for backquote?).
Whereas SBCL seems to have some things going on under the hood:
Yes, it does: it performs read-time optimizations, as it is allowed to. If you want to disallow those read-time optimizations, that's fine, but you then have to make a case for that (rather than simply begging the question by assuming that they are never performed).
I didn't mean to beg the question, I intend to have a honest conversation. It's just that I didn't know of these optimizations. Do you have any idea of the performance impact here? Leslie