So in an attempt to improve my understanding of Racket Macros, I thought
I'd implement the following syntax change to Racket: Introduce an
alternative syntax for pairs where they are delimited by ':' in addition to
' . ', ie:
"a":"b" => '("a" . "b")
Seemed simple enough. I hooked into #%top, split any identifiers on ":"
and reconstructed the syntax. I also always quote the left match which
catches unbound identifiers ala javascript style object keys.
But, now I want
1:2 => '(1 . 2)
"1":2 => '("1" . 2)
Doing a regex-match loses the original typing information unless I
(manually?) store it before symbol->string conversion. What's worse, I
also want:
(define x 3)
k:x => '(k . 3)
But my naive approach loses the binding information along with the typing.
My questions are:
1.) Is my strategy wrong? Should I just tell the Reader to convert any
x:y into (cons x y) and let the expander figure out the rest? Are there
general guidelines to follow in this regard? (Syntax => Reader, Semantics
=> Expander)??
2.) If I stick with macros, what tactics should I be using to avoid the
problems I have above?
I'm sure that binding/typing information is a basic concern well addressed
by Racket. I've dug through the
bound-identifier=?<http://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/stxcmp.html#%28def._%28%28quote._~23~25kernel%29._bound-identifier~3d~3f%29%29>
stuff
a bit, but my understanding is clearly lacking and before I go about
reconstructing lexical information ad-hoc I thought I'd post this as a
sanity check to point me in the right direction.
Thanks for your help.
--
Talk to you soon,
Scott Klarenbach
PointyHat Software Corp.
www.pointyhat.ca
p 604-568-4280
e sc...@pointyhat.ca
200-1575 W. Georgia
Vancouver, BC V6G2V3
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To iterate is human; to recur, divine
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