"Geir Magnusson Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Daniel Rall wrote:
> > I must confess that I am much more used to the opposite behavior,
> > where the symbolic reference $a first evaluates to the symbol
> > $notincontext, then $notincontext renders literally because it's not
> > in the context. However, I would be okay with either of these forms,
> > so long as the behavior is clearly defined in the documentation.
> >
>
> I'm (and I guess we all are, because that's the way it works...) used
> to it too.
>
> However, I can't see how that is the desired behavior. The reason I say
> this is because you are in a Velocimacro and you are using in the body
> of the VM the 'arg variable'. Therefore, we know you aren't trying to
> do something like
>
> $ale!
I don't follow you.
> The only useful bit about rendering '$notincontext' rather than '$a' is
> that it helps you debug. How about we address this with a message
> generated to the log (default off?) that says something like :
>
> Velocimacro arg $foo is null
>
> or something?
What is the benefit of rendering $a literally instead of resolving it
as what LISPers would refer to as a symbolic reference?
> Then we get the debuggability as well as #if() w/o having to complicate
> things...
You say above that the current behavior is already in the style of a
symbolic reference. In what ways does leaving things like this
introduce complications?
Dan
