From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2004-08-03T03:36:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Macros in Ruby

In article <20040802154500.GB67163@freeze.org>,  <jim@freeze.org> wrote:
>* George Moschovitis <gm@navel.gr> [2004-08-02 18:16:35 +0900]:
>
>> Hello everyone,
>> 
>> one of the features of the LISP family of languages that is missing from
>> Ruby are macros. I think they are useful on a lot of occasions so
>> I would like to see Ruby support macros in the future.
>> 
>> However i think it is quite easy to emulate some form of macro 
>> functionality in Ruby. Here is some simple code:
>
>I've heard Matz say that Ruby will not support macros.

True, Matz has said that.  But if we can do something Macro-like with a 
module (as George has shown) then it's optional.

>They are too easily abused and can mutate the language.
>Besides, you can achieve the same powerful affect using
>blocks.
> 

Not quite.  Notice that George introduced totally new 'syntax' using his 
'macros' - you can't do that with blocks.


Phil