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From: bobo@avogadro.arc.nasa.gov (Mark Friedman)
Subject: Re: Please Help:macro accepting symbols only
In-Reply-To: anderson@earhart.cs.umass.edu's message of 07 Dec 1994 16:24:00 GMT
Message-ID: <BOBO.94Dec8163549@avogadro.arc.nasa.gov>
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References: <3c0mkn$jnd@usenet.rpi.edu> <ANDERSON.94Dec7112400@earhart.cs.umass.edu>
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 1994 00:35:48 GMT

In article <ANDERSON.94Dec7112400@earhart.cs.umass.edu>
anderson@earhart.cs.umass.edu (Scott D. Anderson) writes:

   In article <3c0mkn$jnd@usenet.rpi.edu>
   masten@vccsouth13.its.rpi.edu (pRemiEr gURu) writes:

      I am using a macro name make-frame, which takes
      a frame name as an argument.

      so the command

      (make-frame hello)

      would make a frame called Hello 

      But if I store the name of the frame (Hello) in
      an intermediate variable called token,
      and do this

      (make-frame token)

      it makes a frame called token.

   I would suggest that if you want this kind of functionality,
   `make-frame' should be a function, not a macro.

My guess is that Mr. gURu didn't write the make-frame macro.

I will take this opportunity to make the plea that people provide
procedural interfaces to their code as well as macro interfaces so
that people like Mr gURu (I had a simliar problem recently) don't have
to resort to using EVAL, e.g. (eval `(make-frame ,token)).

-Mark
-- 
Mark Friedman
NASA-Ames Research Center
MS 269-2
Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000

vmail: (415) 604-0573
email: bobo@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov
