For Kenny Tilton: Why do I need macros revisited.

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Fri Aug 22 11:10:49 EDT 2003


"Paul Foley" <see at below.invalid> wrote in message
news:m24r09vqbr.fsf at mycroft.actrix.gen.nz...
> Scheme, as such, is barely a language.  It's pretty useless on its
own.
> Most of the functionality of an actual Scheme /implementation/ is
> extra-standard stuff (i.e., not Scheme), which, naturally enough,
> every implementor does differently.

Core Python, while useful on it own, is also pretty sparse.  So I
gather it would be something like having multiple Python
implementations (of comparable popularity) with different sets of
builtins and overlapping but incompatible 'standard' libraries.  The
Python community is fortunate to have avoided that.

...
> Scheme macros are not the same as Lisp macros.  Scheme macros are a
> lot more complicated (and less useful; but most Scheme
implementations
> also offer Lisp-style macros...)

Please excuse my confusing of Scheme with Lisp.  I am pleased to find
that my difficulty in reading the Scheme macro stuff wasn't just me.
But note that there have been proposals that if Python were to have a
macro facility, it should be 'hygenic', which I presume means like
Scheme macros.

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.

Terry J. Reedy






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