Ziglings: Learn the Zig programming language by fixing tiny broken programs

Re:Ziglings: Learn the Zig programming language by fixing ti... by gmfawcett on Saturday February 13, 2021 @04:16PM (#26127017)

"Even Lisp ended up with macros with own sub language..." I assume you're talking about Scheme approaches like `syntax-case` and `syntax-rules`? In Common Lisp, macros are written in Lisp, the same way you would write runtime code. Unquoting and splicing are part of the core language (e.g. they can be applied to data as well as to code).

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Re:Ziglings: Learn the Zig programming language by fixing ti... by fpoling on Saturday February 13, 2021 @05:19PM (#26127521)

I was not aware that unquoting in Common Lisp can be applied to data. So it is not a specialized sub language just for macros, but a general purpose template system that could also generate code.

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Re:Ziglings: Learn the Zig programming language by fixing ti... by ywei3410 on Saturday February 13, 2021 @10:47PM (#26129494)

It's really a shorthand for writing lists - sexp's are lists, so can use the same syntax.

Macro's in Lisp are essentially "just" functions where the arguments are un-evaluated - you can use all the same functions etc...

Writing a simple Lisp interpreter is really quite educational - when you add macros and quoting into the language, you suddenly have a realisation at how simple it is.

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Re:Ziglings: Learn the Zig programming language by fixing ti... by kazinator on Saturday February 13, 2021 @08:15PM (#26128748)

That's right. There is no difference between:

  (defmacro my-quote (x)
    `(quote ,x))

and

  (defmacro my-quote (x)
    (list 'quote x))

That `(quote ,x) is just way of writing (list 'quote x), not a notation for writing macros.

That's it.

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