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148 :: macros syntax idea

• exhu (orginal) [2013-05-01T16:55:23+02:00] view original

  I have been trying to write a macro for a long while -) and i think if there were a facility such as a "tree parser" then it would be easy to write common AST transformations ( see http://www.antlr.org/wiki/display/ANTLR3/4.+Tree+Parsing ) because then you can see graphically what's going on.

  Probably, Araq already knows how to improve current macro facility but If this idea helps to improve the system then it's worth to mention here.

  Even trivial macros still look damn hard to develop and almost impossible to support for me, it's from the newbie's point of view, because i've never programmed in CL and other macro-rich languages...

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• gradha (orginal) [2013-05-01T20:37:24+02:00] view original

  Possibly an Aporia killer feature would be an interactive macro mode, where you open a window/tab for a single macro proc, and whenever you update it or change it Aporia runs it through the compiler with macros.dumpTree, displaying side by side the generated code for the macro and let you inspect.

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• exhu (orginal) [2013-05-02T10:31:21+02:00] view original

  But now it looks as if i have to write a recursive descent parser for complex macros :)

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• Araq (orginal) [2013-05-02T10:43:11+02:00] view original

  I can't follow: Yeah the macros API is hardly sufficient, however it's the AST that is passed to the macro. It's already been parsed. What we need is a working 'macros.quote' for easier AST construction and much more helpers and a few missing builtins. You should check out fowl's macros_dsl module which will be become part of the stdlib.

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