Reader Macros
The Shen reader sits on top of the primitive bytes stream reader and reads from either a file (using 'open')
or the input stream. The reader is programmable just as in Qi II, but uses the 'defmacro' construction,
which is actually cleaner and easier to use than the Qi II sugar function. However internally, the
defmacro construction is handled using similar techniques as for sugar functions. A macro in Shen is
a 1-place function that is used by the reader to parse the user input. Here for instance is a macro
used for benchmarking Shen.
(defmacro exec-macro
[exec Expr] -> [trap-error [time Expr] [/. E failed]])
The action of this macro is to macroexpand every instance of (exec Expr) as typed or loaded into the top
level by the macroexpansion of (trap-error (time Expr) (/. E failed)). There is no need to include a
default 'X -> X' at the bottom of a macro (as is needed in Qi II) - this is inserted automatically. Shen
macros are tied into the Shen eval function (see eval below). The function 'macroexpand' applies the list
of current macros to the top level of an expression.
The mode of operation of 'macroexpand' within the reader and within eval is as follows.
Within the reader: the list of macros is composed to a fixpoint on every read token t
(i.e. atom or list of atoms). If the token t is changed to t' where t <> t', the process is repeated on every
subterm of t'.
Within 'eval'; the list of macros is composed on every subterm (i.e. atom or list of atoms) to a fixpoint. |
