[kazinator]

Lisps in fact do textual inclusion. In ANSI Common Lisp, when you (load "foo.lisp"), and foo.lisp isn't a compiled file, it gets read and processed as text.

http://clhs.lisp.se/Body/f_load.htm

The symbols in the compiled file get read in the current package. The <star>package<star> variable is dynamically rebound, over the lifetime of the load, to its existing value, so that if the file happens to change it, that effect is undone when the load finishes.

The loaded file source can arrange for its bulk to be read in its own namespace, or it can be processed in the parent namespace, which is the best of both worlds.

When a file is compiled, then it's no longer textual inclusion: best of both worlds again.

This is all so reasonably designed that I copied the salient aspects of things like load and compile-file and all that jazz nearly as is into TXR Lisp, which isn't an ANSI CL implementation and free to do anything differently.