For Kenny Tilton: Why do I need macros revisited.

[Jacek Generowicz]

"Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu> writes:

> Until some advocate of a Python macro facility adds more detail to the
> proposal beyound 'Lisp/Scheme-like maco facility', it is really hard
> for someone like me, who has used neither, to have much of any
> concrete idea of what is being proposed.

Until some advocate of a Python macro facility adds more detail to the
proposal ... it is really hard for me to have much of any concrete
idea what is being proposed ... because Lisp-style macros rely on the
fact that Lisp code is expressed in a fundamental Lisp data structure,
in the form of its parse tree. This ain't the case in Python, so the
whole macro business suddenly gets more complicated by an order of
magnitude or two.

I just can't imagine what such a macro system would look like. Maybe
someone with deep knowledge of Dylan can enlighten us.