On 11 Sep 2009, at 5:00 pm, David Van Horn wrote:

> John Cowan wrote:
>> David Van Horn scripsit:
>>> What does "low-level hygienic macros" mean?
>> Alex Shinn's discussion of the matter at
>> http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg08779.html
>> is very
>> illuminating, if you discount his obvious prejudice against syntax-
>> case.
>
> So "low-level" vs. "high-level" boils down to the disjointness of
> pairs, symbols, etc. versus syntax objects?

Not really; IMHO, high-level macros mean having a pattern-matching
syntax for disassembling the input forms, while low-level macros mean
passing it to an arbitrary Scheme function (whether as pairs/symbols
or as syntax objects) - that function may then invoke some general
pattern-matching facility on it if it chooses to, but it *could* take
it to bits with car and cdr. So high-level can be a library built on
top of low-level.

> If so, I believe R6RS does not specify its "level", and if I recall
> correctly, Andre van Tonder had a "low-level" R6RS expander in which
> syntax objects were not distinct.  (I keep using scare quotes
> because I think this terminology is awful and should be abandoned).

Yeah, it is unfortunate wording...

>
> David
>


ABS

--
Alaric Snell-Pym
Work: http://www.snell-systems.co.uk/
Play: http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/
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