RE: frames vs. weak hash tables and garbage collection

[Drew Adams]

> ielm implements its own mechanism for it and it calls it "*", "**", and
> "***", giving access only to the last 3 values.
> I do use these occasionally (contrary to `values' which I've never used).
> 
> So I guess 3 is plenty indeed.  In many circumstances where I 
> could use this
> kind of feature I prefer using (setq sm-tmp <exp>) and then refer to that
> value as `sm-tmp' this way I can reuse this value many times easily
> (whereas with `values' I'd have to keep track of the position within the
> list etc...).

Common Lisp has the same thing: 
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node181.html