# 9.2.1 Names, places, frames, and environments

Because assignments can change the value associated with a name, the order in which expressions are evaluated now matters. As a result, we need to revisit several of our other evaluation rules and change the way we think about processes.

Since the value associated with a name can now change, instead of associating a value directly with a name we use a name as a way to identify a place. A place has a name and holds the value associated with that name. With mutation, we can change the value in a place; this changes the value associated with the place's name. A frame is a collection of places.

An environment is a pair consisting of a frame and a pointer to a parent environment. A special environment known as the global environment has no parent environment. The global environment exists when the interpreter starts, and is maintained for the lifetime of the interpreter. Initially, the global environment contains the built-in procedures. Names defined in the interactions buffer are placed in the global environment. Other environments are created and destroyed as a program is evaluated. Figure 9.1 shows some example environments, frames, and places.

Figure 9.1. Sample environment: The global environment contains a frame with three names. Each name has an associated place that contains the value associated with that name. The value associated with counter is the currently 0. The value associated with set-counter! is the procedure we defined in Example 9.1. A procedure is characterized by its parameters, body code, and a pointer to the environment in which it will be evaluated.

Every environment has a parent environment except for the global environment. All other environments descend from the global environment. Hence, if we start with any environment, and continue to follow its parent pointers we always eventually reach the global environment.

The key change to our evaluation model is that whereas before we could evaluate expressions without any notion of where they are evaluated, once we introduce mutation, we need to consider the environment in which an expression is evaluated. An environment captures the current state of the interpreter. The value of an expression depends on both the expression itself, and on the environment in which it is evaluated.