On 18 Mar 2008, at 12:09, Leslie P. Polzer wrote:
But according to the current spec, ` need not expand into anything at all. What I am challenging is your assertion that there should be a single ("the") backquote object that ` always expands to.
It would be handy and add consistency (why is the expansion for quote defined but not the one for backquote?).
It is also sometimes the case that you want to expand into a use of backquote, unquote and unquote-splicing in your own macro definitions. In some cases, this can be very handy. But in Common Lisp, these things are handled at readtime, that's too early for macroexpansion. I could imagine a compromise where backquote, unquote and unquote- splicing is available as special forms, but where the corresponding syntax is not required to expand into those. Although I don't know what the implications thereof are... Pascal -- 1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08) http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/ Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc@p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Programming Technology Lab Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium