[Gnu-arch-users] Re: Pika 0.1pre3 -- writer, vectors, contributions

[Miles Bader]

Jonathan Walther <address@hidden> writes:
> Since macro side effects can be useful, why make a person go through
> contortions to obtain them?  I can see maybe adding some syntactic sugar
> to make such side effects intentional, but why try to eliminate them
> altogether?

I thought that's what hygienic macros _were_ -- syntactic sugar to make
sure macros do what they look like they're doing, but also allowing the
full power of traditional lisp macros; my vague recollection is that
it's not particularly hard to declare certain arguments as being
`untouchable' (I mean simply included as-is, without hygiene).

If hygienic macros do provide all that, I'm not sure what you're
complaining about, other than perhaps the implementation bloat.

-Miles
-- 
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it
has to be us.  -- Jerry Garcia