Re: Recursive expansion of pmacros (was: Re: Typo: .substr in pmacros.texi is .substring in pmacros.scm)

[Doug Evans <dje at transmeta dot com>]

Hans-Peter Nilsson writes:
 > > You left out the "implicit".
 > > e.g. what's the opposite of implicit? [hint hint]
 > 
 > Ah, you mean I should use (.eval (pmacro-expand '(.sym ...)))!

Almost, but not quite.  I can see why that might be one's first guess.

 > But that's frowned upon (pmacros.scm) (supposedly because you
 > break through the CGEN description interface into scheme and
 > nasty things not accounted for can happen):
 > 
 >  ; .eval is an experiment.  Ports that consider themselves to be of beta
 >  ; quality or better don't use it.

.eval has connotations far beyond the problem at hand.

 > Besides, I *expected* implicit re-lookup of a symbol built-up
 > from (.sym ...).  I think it comes naturally: what happens to
 > abc should happen to the expansion of (.sym a b c).  If people
 > don't want re-lookup, may there can be added explicit deferring,
 > by, say, (quote ...) ;-)

Let's wait and see what, if any, kinds of problems this causes.