From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Improving aesthetics & readability of backquote
Date: Sun, 19 May 2019 23:38:38 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <jwv36l9ztzd.fsf-monnier+emacs@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: m28sv1omiu.fsf@paulwrankin.com
> Then it would be a case of augmenting the "unquote" ,VAR and "splice" ,@VAR
> reader constructs:
>
> (quoteval (1 2 (unquote a) 5 (splice b) 8 ))
> -> (1 2 (3 4) 5 6 7 8)
You'd feel quite at home in Scheme where the reader's
'E => (quote E)
is complemented by
`E => (quasiquote E)
,E => (unquote E)
,@E => (unquote-splicing E)
Elisp doesn't have that, mostly for historical reasons, I think.
I haven't been able to confirm it, but I believe the road looked like:
the Elisp reader originally only had the `quote` special element and
since people don't like to write (backquote (foo bar (unquote baz))),
they started writing (` (foo bar (, baz))) which was at least vaguely
reminiscent of the "normal" backquote/unquote used in other Lisps.
This is the "old-style" quotes. When the new-style quotes were added
to the reader (those that look like regular Lisp) it was natural to map
`E => (` E)
so that the existing definition of the ` macro worked both with the new
and with the old syntax.
Stefan
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-05-20 3:38 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 29+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-05-20 3:03 Improving aesthetics & readability of backquote Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-20 3:38 ` Stefan Monnier [this message]
2019-05-22 15:44 ` Stefan Monnier
2019-05-20 8:52 ` Alan Mackenzie
2019-05-20 13:25 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-20 14:02 ` Alan Mackenzie
2019-05-20 14:26 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-20 16:08 ` Ken Olum
2019-05-20 23:19 ` Richard Stallman
2019-05-21 2:06 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-21 2:22 ` Noam Postavsky
2019-05-21 2:39 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-21 20:19 ` Richard Stallman
2019-05-22 2:46 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-22 7:56 ` Eli Zaretskii
2019-05-22 8:55 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-22 15:57 ` Michael Heerdegen
2019-05-22 16:13 ` 조성빈
2019-05-22 16:13 ` Michael Heerdegen
2019-05-22 22:40 ` Richard Stallman
2019-05-20 8:59 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
2019-05-20 13:35 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-20 13:47 ` Basil L. Contovounesios
2019-05-20 14:18 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-20 14:48 ` Basil L. Contovounesios
2019-05-20 15:25 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
2019-05-20 23:21 ` Richard Stallman
2019-05-21 2:34 ` Paul W. Rankin
2019-05-22 16:14 ` Sam Steingold
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