On Friday, 12 June 2015 at 17:58:22 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
wrote:
On 6/12/15 10:26 AM, deadalnix wrote:
This baffles me. It seems that language designer always need
to fuck up
macros either by:
- Creating a new API to spawn AST, which become a burden on
the
compiler development (bonus point if you expose compiler
internal).
- Creating a new syntax, preferably completely inscrutable so
you can
pretend you are a guru while using it.
There is a good way to express AST in a language, and this is
how you do
it for everything else in the program : you use the damn
language syntax
and grammar.
In their defense, there is a need for a metalanguage as well do
manipulate ASTs themselves. That's why all macro systems just
look a bit off. I suggest you give it a shot at defining a
natural-looking macro system if you're up to something, but I
suspect there are many subtleties to cope with.
Andrei
Good timing. Check the thread I made about statement mixins, it
hase a pretty natural and simple macro syntax that is an
extension of the mixin syntax. Thorough admitadly no way to
manipulate ast.
