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From: blume@dynamic.cs.princeton.edu (Matthias Blume)
Subject: Re: A proposal for #f and '() in the GNU extension language
In-Reply-To: thorn@expresso.irisa.fr's message of 22 Nov 1994 15:26:01 GMT
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Date: Wed, 23 Nov 1994 14:49:19 GMT
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In article <THORN.94Nov22162601@expresso.irisa.fr> thorn@expresso.irisa.fr (Tommy Thorn) writes:

   Matthias Blume writes:

   | There are low-level macro systems, which (as far as I can tell) are as
   | close to the eval-it-twice paradigm as possible without sacrificing
   | hygiene.  (Rumors are that the famous next version of VSCM will have
   | such a system.  If anybody is interested in details -- ask!)

   Ah, yet-another-new-macro-implementation.

   With the notable exception of Syntax-case macros, I haven't seen an
   elegant low-level macro system.  If you have something truely better
   than syntax-case macros, please speak up.

IMO, SYNTAX-CASE is not quite ``low''-level.  What I was after was a
macro system which allow implementing high-level pattern-directed
template-instantiating macro definitions AS MACROS.  In other words, I
was looking for something low-levelish enough to be implemented with
little extra effort yet powerful enough to support complicated and
convenient macro languages like SYNTAX-RULES and SYNTAX-CASE.

PRIMITIVE-TRANSFORMER is not meant to be the macro specification of
choice for most purposes.  But it makes a wonderful target for the
macro transformer responsible for the SYNTAX-RULES macro...

--
-Matthias
