On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> > But S-expressions are arguably the best syntax for writing macro
> > expansions.  Since an S-expression is trivially parseable and dispatches on
> 
> That's exactly where syntax is important: depending on your syntax some
> things are easy/concise and others aren't, so people end up adapting a very
> different programming style.  It doesn't mean that one syntax is
> intrinsically better than another, but just that syntax does matter.

Macroexpansion - if done properly - is done at the level of parsed trees. 
Hence, yes, it does matter if this is obscured by syntax or not, that is: 
whether your language does provide a special "mostly arbitrary" syntax or 
whether it does not.

Superficial differences in various ad-hoc notations, say "{}" vs. 
"BEGIN/END" and such, by far do not matter as much as questions whether 
there is a machine code compiler available, or whether memory management 
works in a proper way.

-- 
regards,               tf@cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de              (o_
 Thomas Fischbacher -  http://www.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~tf  //\
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