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1 point by palsecam 5593 days ago | link | parent

No sorry me because my examples should be better. I use the command line but yes it's still "top level" and this is not enough to test this, right?

But here; OK, if 'fm is a function, the behaviour is "like in Arc". But if it's a macro, it seems to behave "like I want". Or is my example not good? (Sorry I'm really tired here, I can't even realize this :-D).

I mean, don't you think 'myeach as a CL macro would work?

> (mac ech args `(each _ ,@args))

Actually I'm currently using that. I'm just using the name 'each_ instead and define it using the macro currying stuff of twilightsentry (see id=10139, very interesting).

   arc> (= each_ (>_ each '_))
But still you know, one extra character ('_') to type... :-D


2 points by CatDancer 5593 days ago | link

> But if it's a macro, it seems to behave "like I want". Or is my example not good?

Shall I wait until tomorrow to reply so that you can get some sleep? :)

Try

  ((lambda () (fm)))
you can see that only if (fm) is invoked directly from the top level will the macro expansion be avoided.

> I mean, don't you think 'myeach as a CL macro would work?

What you need, in CL or in Arc, is a way to tell if a variable is defined at macro expansion time. Suppose Arc could tell you at macro expansion time if a variable was defined. Then you could say

  (def myeach (first . args)
    (if (defined first)
      `(each _ ,first ,@args)
      `(each ,first ,@args)))
no magic needed in 'if, in either language :)

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1 point by palsecam 5593 days ago | link

> Shall I wait until tomorrow to reply so that you can get some sleep? :)

Lol, yes I definitely go to bed now :-)

> ((lambda () (fm))

Nice demonstration indeed.

> What you need, in CL or in Arc, is a way to tell if a variable is defined at macro expansion time.

Right. I may try to modify Arc in this purpose one of these days.

> no magic needed in 'if, in either language :)

Magic definitely sucks :-D!

Thanks a lot CatDancer!

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