From: Robert Feldt <feldt@...>
Date: 2001-10-25T18:19:03+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:23277] Re: Ruby macros

On Thu, 25 Oct 2001, Avi Bryant wrote:

> A preprocessor wouldn't make sense for Ruby; it would definitely want to
> be dynamic.  For Java, unfortunately, it was the only realistic choice...
> 
Ok, I was a bit afraid there... I shouldn't have worried since you are
you, man. :-)

Here's the status on Ruth since its directly related:
  I've added conversion from external nodes to MRI's (Matz Ruby
  Interpreter) internal. However, when doing so I noted my spec for the
  internal nodes have a large number of the arguments in the wrong
  order. This is ok when going from internal to external (since this is
  based on referencing named vars in struct) but not the other way around.

  And it was too boring to go through all the 100 nodes so
  haven't touched it in a while... However, I'm
  pretty confident its a viable path. You have to get all the internal
  data structures built correcty though. But then you can plug and play
  by injecting your own code wherever you want in methods (ok,
  not C-implemented ones) etc.

  I think Guy Decoux has also done some stuff on this in his ff
  (?) package. Can you comment Guy?

Keep in touch if you pick this up.

/R