ANSI Common Lisp 24 System Construction 24.1 System Construction
Concepts To load a file is to treat its contents as code and
execute that code. The file may contain source code or compiled
code. A file containing source code is called a source file.
Loading a source file is accomplished essentially by
sequentially reading2 the forms in the file, evaluating each
immediately after it is read. A file containing compiled code is
called a compiled file. Loading a compiled file is similar to
loading a source file, except that the file does not contain
text but rather an implementation-dependent representation of
pre-digested expressions created by the compiler. Often, a
compiled file can be loaded more quickly than a source file. See
Section 3.2 Compilation. The way in which a source file is
distinguished from a compiled file