On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Konrad Hinsen <konrad.hin...@fastmail.net> wrote: > On 13 Mar 2010, at 03:32, Jonathan Shore wrote: > >> Could + and other operators be changed to a macro mapping rather than the >> current defn, mapping the argument list to a binary expression tree (+ (+ >> (+ ... instead of the list style application (I'm guessing yes, not being >> familiar with CL-style macros). > > This would not be a good idea for the arithmetic functions in clojure.core, > as macros come with their own restrictions. For example, if + were a macro, > you couldn't pass it as an argument to map, reduce, or apply. All of these > occur very frequently.
I wrote my reply to him before drinking coffee, so I hadn't considered this (obvious) issue. Common Lisp's has compiler macros. These are macros associated with a function which will be called only when calls to the function are resolvable at compile time. While nicer than plain macros (as you can still treat the function as a first-class value at run time) they are still not semantically transparent because of the possibility of var rebinding. -Per -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
