From: gabriele renzi <surrender_it@...>
Date: 2005-09-28T08:41:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Fwd: Lisp macros

Edward Faulkner ha scritto:
> On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 09:21:07PM +0900, Devin Mullins wrote:
> 
>>Crappy example...
>>
>>Help! Is there a Lisper in the house?
> 
> 
> Part of the attraction of Lisp macros is that they allow you to keep
> the core language very small, and add the features you want with
> macros.  For example, as long as you have the lambda operator, you can
> define things like "while" and "let" as macros, not keywords.  This is
> in fact how many Lisp implementations work, because it keeps the
> compiler/interpreter simple.

I may recall wrongly, but my I remember that
- once you have lambda forms and macros you can write everything
- Common Lisp, which is what I think people think of when writing 
"lisp", still has something like X special forms (with X>20)

<snip>
> Paul Graham's "On Lisp" is available online and contains several
> chapters about macros.  It gives many more examples:

I think another nice text available online for lisp noobs (like me) is 
"Practical Common Lisp". It is not a whole macro cookbook like Graham's 
text, but it shows how macros are really a simple concept that can be 
applied to simple abstractions, that stacked on over another result in 
much smaller and cleaner code