On Dec 28, 2007 6:05 AM, Andrew Coppin
[I actually heard a number of people tell me that learning LISP would change my life forever because LISP has something called "macros". I tried to learn it, and disliked it greatly. It's too messy. And what the heck is "cdr" ment to mean anyway? To me, LISP doesn't even seem all that different from normal languages (modulo weird syntax). Now Haskell... that's FUN!]
Contents of Data Register. Macros are like Template Haskell. One example of where they're useful is programmer definition of new binding forms. That's not possible in Haskell without Templates. Macros were invented in Lisp because the syntax is so easy for machine manipulation---they don't have a tenth the complexity of Template Haskell for about the same power. -Brian -- Brian T. Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu or brian.sniffen@gmail.com http://www.evenmere.org/~bts