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\chapter{The pervasive environment}

The {\em pervasive environment} can be thought of as a compilation
unit that all compilation units implicitly depend upon.  The pervasive
enviroment exports all non-modular bindings (types, values, infix
operators, overloaded symbols) that are mandated by the specification
for the Standard ML Basis Library~\cite{reppy99:basis}.  (All other
bindings of the Basis Library are exported by {\tt \$/basis.cm} which is
a genuine CM library.)

The pervasive environment is the only place where CM conveys
non-modular bindings from one compilation unit to another, and its
definition is fixed.
