[bitc-dev] DISCUSS: To macro or not to macro?

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

Sandro:

Can you say what you mean by "multistaging"?

It is certainly true that a well-structured macro system can be
implemented in a pre-processor. There are two differences:

  1. The macro expansion is integrated into the compiler front end.
     This is mainly a matter of implementation.

  2. The macro mechanism is extensible. It is certainly possible to
     build extensible preprocessors, but most preprocessors have
     not been extensible in this way.

shap


On Fri, 2008-07-18 at 13:16 -0400, Sandro Magi wrote:
> Ever since learning about multistaging, I've never seen the point of 
> macros. I'd imagine that BitC would only want to permit one stage, and 
> using staging has the advantage of retaining important type information.
> 
> Staging can also permit a limited form of reflection/polytypism [1]. I 
> suspect that you might consider even a single stage as a tad too 
> ambitious though. :-)
> 
> Sandro
> 
> [1] http://okmij.org/ftp/ML/#gprint