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

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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