The Bawden paper is a really good paper that I hadn't read, yet. Thanks! I've
been thinking about quasiquotation a lot lately as it relates to the
syntax-constructor approach I've been considering for the vector API in project
Panama. In particular, the notion of nested loops that feed induction
variables inward. Originally I had thought that perhaps this was an issue that
I could solve via 'libraryizing' loops in specialized forms (reduction, etc.)
but now I'm not so sure. Quasiquoting with variable fields seems like
something one could construct over a combination of MethodHandle and VarHandle
combinators. The issue I'm trying to wrap my brain around right now is inward
dependency, or inward variable capture that you'd see in something like:
for(int a = Z;;)
for(int b = X;;)
for(int c = Y;;)
//a,b,c captured here. How to model this dependency in a
DSL/constructor?
I suppose we can use a varargs/spreader/collector-based approach where the user
track their captured variables using a scheme like De Bruijn[1] indexing or
otherwise. It's not something you can statically check, but those may be the
breaks.
Coincidentally, I "grew up" with a different flavor of quasiquoting from the ML
and Haskell communities that involves staged compilation and concrete DSLs that
were parsed and transformed back to the host language's syntax before the final
state of program compilation. Not sure how relevant that is to this topic, but
here it is all the same[2].
--Ian
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bruijn_index
[2] Mainland, Why It's Nice to be Quoted: Quasiquoting for Haskell
http://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/150FP/archive/geoff-mainland/quasiquoting.pdf
-----Original Message-----
From: mlvm-dev [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Rose
Sent: Tuesday, August 2, 2016 4:28 PM
To: Da Vinci Machine Project <[email protected]>
Subject: FTR: good old paper on quasi-quotation
Related to some discussion at the JVMLS about quasi-constants (templates,
constants with holes), here is the early history of quasi-quoting in computing,
as reported by someone who was there.
Alan Bawden, Quasiquotation in Lisp (1999)
http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/pepm99/bawden.pdf
Also regarding the history of quasiquotes, I found this little gem, showing one
of our own community, in his tender years, innocently confounding the Boffins
of Quotation.
Boolos & Jeffrey, Logic, Logic, Logic (1999), p. 393
https://books.google.com/books?id=2BvlvetSrlgC&pg=PA393&lpg=PA393&source=bl&ots=sYbY0uDPnJ&sig=HWnkaAHgQOG45MGn5_KyYbPicsk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEpL_33KPOAhVK7GMKHdU0BbwQ6AEISTAL#v=onepage&q&f=false
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