Re: and-let* is not composable?

[Panicz Maciej Godek <godek.maciek@gmail.com>]

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> Well, while syntax-rules macros are quite easy to understand

> > (at least from the user's point of view), although sometimes a little
> > tricky, the syntax-case system I find still too difficult to use.
> > define-macro, on the other hand, is very easy to explain
> > even to beginner programmers, although the resulting macros
> > are much more difficult to analyse.
> If you, or the other people who are confused by syntax-case, can point
> to the parts of the manual that confuse you, so we can clear them up, I
> think we'd all appreciate it.
>
>
The order of presentation in the manual is that syntax-rules macros
are explained first, because they are more limited, and there's no
need to get into details regarding syntax objects.

I used to explain the "syntax-rules" macros to my friends by
first showing "what we want to transform into what", and then packing
it up in some magic to work (because basically that's how I
understand them). The advantage was that the meaning of the macro
is readily visible and there's no need to analyse the code.

The manual however makes very little reference to define-macro system
to explain how syntax-case works. It is easy to see that lisp programs
are lists of symbols, and so they can be processed like any other
lists of symbols before they are evaluated -- that's the essentials
of lisp macros. In case of "syntax-case" some new mysterious
notions appear: namely, the unfamous syntax objects. And while it
is easy to imagine how the list of symbols look like, all we read
about in the manual is that "the syntax expander represents
identifiers as annotated syntax objects, attaching such information
to those syntax objects as is needed to maintain referential
transparency". We don't know what sort of information is that, and
why is it better to use syntax-case over define-macro.

Especially if we compare the "anamorphic if" definition from the
manual,
(define-syntax aif
       (lambda (x)
         (syntax-case x ()
           ((_ test then else)
            (syntax-case (datum->syntax x 'it) ()
              (it
                #'(let ((it test))
                    (if it then else))))))))

with the most straightforward "anamorphic if" with define-macro:

(define-macro (aif test then else)
  `(let ((it ,test))
     (if it
         ,then
         ,else)))

(Even if the latter is not exactly right, as is argued in section
6.10.5, it generally does its job)

Also, I have to admit that I still don't understand what the
syntax-case macro above is doing. Furthermore, it isn't clear why
syntax->datum takes only one argument, and datum->syntax takes
two (a syntax object and the "datum" itself)



> Fundamentally, syntax-case shouldn't be harder to use than define-macro
> 99% of the time, if you remember
>
> - macros are functions from "syntax-objects" to syntax-objects
> - syntax-objects are smart symbols
> - syntax->datum to remove the smartness
> - datum->syntax is for when you want to break hygiene (but syntax
>   parameters are better where applicable)
> - use quasisyntax to construct lists of syntax-objects instead of
>   quasiquote to construct lists of symbols.
>


Maybe showing a sufficient number of examples would be
more helpful, because I haven't got a clue "where syntax
parameters are applicable" or how I could use quasisyntax
and unsyntax.

By the way, I've had another problem when defining a macro.
I've been trying to implement something like dynamical scoping,
but such that it wouldn't require introducing global variables

The idea is that one can write

(with-default ((a 5))
(define (f x) (+ x (specific a))))

and that later the procedure could be used like that:
(f 10)
===> 15
(specify ((a 20))
(f 10))
===> 30

The first attempt was that there could be a global hash table
*specifics* that would store the lists of values, and that
"specific" could be a local macro that would expand to a hash
reference. So I tried to implement that using syntax-rules
in the following way:

(define-syntax with-default
  (syntax-rules ()
    ((_ ((name value) ...)
        actions ...)
     (let-syntax ((specific (syntax-rules (name ...)
                              ((_ name)
                               (hash-ref *specifics* 'name value))
                               ;; don't mind shadowing for now
                              ...)))
       actions ...))))

However, when I tried to use it, it seemed that the let-syntax
behaves as if it wasn't there (so it didn't behave at all!):

(with-default ((a 5))
  (define (f x)(+ x (specific a))))

The situation was (again) resolved by creating a nasty combination
of "define-macro" and "syntax-rules", namely:

(define-macro (with-default bindings . actions)
  (match bindings
    (((names values) ...)
     `(let-syntax ((specific (syntax-rules ,names
                               ,@(map (match-lambda
                                          ((name value)
                                           `((_ ,name)
                                             (hash-ref *defaults*
                                                       ',name ,value))))
                                      bindings))))
        ,@actions))))

It's not that I like it. I really don't. But I don't know how how
else this could be achieved, nor why the former solution
so stubbornly resists to work.

Thanks,
M.

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