[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > 2. One could proposed hygienic pattern-matching macros in Python, > similar to > Scheme syntax-rules macros. Again, it is not obvious how to > implement pattern-matching in Python in a non-butt-ugly way. Plus, > I feel hygienic macros quite limited and not worth the effort.
It wasn't obvious how to do it in Scheme either. There was quite a bit of head scratching and experimental implementation before there was consensus. > 3. We would add to Python the learning curve of macros and their > subtilities and we do not want it. I can't imagine how it could be worse than the learning curve of __metaclass__, which we already have. If it was done in a way that most of us would just rely on a few standard ones, that would be fine. > 4. Macros would complicate a lot Python module system. I don't see how, but maybe I'm missing something. > 5. We have Guido providing a good syntax for us all, why we should be > fiddling with it? More seriously, if some verbosity is recognized > in the language (think to the "raison d'etre" of decorators, for > instance) I very much prefer to wait for Guido to take care of > that, once and for all, than having 100 different custom made > solutions based on macros. Every time some newbie asks an innocent "how do I ..." question, we see unbelievably horrid answers from gurus. Just check the FAQ about conditional expressions, etc. I just don't see Python syntax changes as forthcoming. > What I would be interested in is a Lisp/Scheme implementation > compiling to Python bytecode, but I am not aware of any project > in that direction. But that sounds like a bizarre idea. Python bytecode is just a CPython artifact, not part of the language. And it's not even that good an artifact. Good Lisp/Scheme implementations compile to native code that beats the pants off of CPython bytecode. It would make much more sense to have a Python implementation that compiles Python to S-expressions and then lets a high performance Lisp or Scheme system take care of the rest. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
