Re: and-let* is not composable?

[Panicz Maciej Godek]

> 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.