Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk schrijft:
I think [Clean macros] roughly correspond to inline functions in Haskell.
That's right. I think the most important difference is that Clean macros can also be used in patterns (if they don't have a lower case name or contain local functions). The INLINE pragma for GHC is advisory, macros in Clean will always be substituted.
They are separate in Clean because module interfaces are written by hand, so the user can include something to be expanded inline in other modules by making it a macro.
In Haskell module interfaces are generated by the compiler, so they can contain unfoldings of functions worth inlining without explicit distinguishing in the source.
Fergus Henderson replies:
I don't think that Clean's module syntax is the reason. (Or if it is the reason, then it is not a _good_ reason.) [...]
You're right, having hand written interfaces doesn't preclude compiler written interfaces (or optimisation files). Let's call it a pragmatic reason: Clean macros are there because we don't do any cross-module optimisations and we do want some form of inlining. Cheers, Ronny Wichers Schreur