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authorVincent Ambo <tazjin@google.com>2020-01-22T21·38+0000
committerVincent Ambo <tazjin@google.com>2020-01-22T21·38+0000
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+quasiquote-2.0
+==============
+
+Why should it be hard to write macros that write other macros?
+Well, it shouldn't!
+
+quasiquote-2.0 defines slightly different rules for quasiquotation,
+that make writing macro-writing macros very smooth experience.
+
+NOTE: quasiquote-2.0 does horrible things to shared structure!!!
+(it does a lot of COPY-TREE's, so shared-ness is destroyed).
+So, it's indeed a tool to construct code (where it does not matter much if the
+structure is shared or not) and not the data (or, at least, not the data with shared structure)
+
+
+```lisp
+(quasiquote-2.0:enable-quasiquote-2.0)
+
+(defmacro define-my-macro (name args &body body)
+  `(defmacro ,name ,args
+     `(sample-thing-to-expand-to
+        ,,@body))) ; note the difference from usual way
+
+(define-my-macro foo (x y)
+  ,x ; now here injections of quotation constructs work
+  ,y)
+
+(define-my-macro bar (&body body)
+  ,@body) ; splicing is also easy
+```
+
+The "injections" in macros FOO and BAR work as naively expected, as if I had written
+```lisp
+(defmacro foo (x y)
+  `(sample-thing-to-expand-to ,x ,y))
+
+(defmacro bar (&body body)
+  `(sample-thing-to-expand-to ,@body))
+
+(macroexpand-1 '(foo a b))
+
+  '(SAMPLE-THING-TO-EXPAND-TO A B)
+
+(macroexpand-1 '(bar a b c))
+
+  '(SAMPLE-THING-TO-EXPAND-TO A B C)
+```
+
+
+So, how is this effect achieved?
+
+
+DIG, INJECT and SPLICE
+-------------------------
+
+The transformations of backquote occur at macroexpansion-time and not at read-time.
+It is totally possible not to use any special reader syntax, but just
+underlying macros directly!
+
+At the core is a macro DIG, which expands to the code that generates the
+expression according to the rules, which are roughly these:
+  * each DIG increases "depth" by one (hence the name)
+  * each INJECT or SPLICE decreases "depth" by one
+  * if depth is 0, evaluation is turned on
+  * if depth if not zero (even if it's negative!) evaluation is off
+  * SPLICE splices the form, similarly to ordinary `,@`, INJECT simply injects, same as `,`
+
+```lisp
+;; The example using macros, without special reader syntax
+
+(dig ; depth is 1 here
+  (a b
+     (dig ; depth is 2 here
+       ((inject c) ; this inject is not evaluated, because depth is nonzero
+        (inject (d ;depth becomes 1 here again
+                (inject e) ; and this inject is evaluated, because depth becomes zero
+                ))
+        (inject 2 f) ; this inject with level specification is evaluated, because it
+                     ; decreases depth by 2
+        ))))
+
+
+;; the same example using ENABLE-QUASIQUOTE-2.0 syntax is written as
+`(a b `(,c ,(d ,e) ,,f)) ; note double comma acts different than usually
+```
+
+
+The ENABLE-QUASIQUOTE-2.0 macro just installs reader that reads
+`FORM as (DIG FORM), ,FORM as (INJECT FORM) and ,@FORM as (SPLICE FORM).
+You can just as well type DIG's, INJECT's and SPLICE's directly, 
+(in particular, when writing utility functions that generate macro-generating code)
+or roll your own convenient reader syntax (pull requests are welcome).
+
+So, these two lines (with ENABLE-QUASIQUOTE-2.0) read the same
+```lisp
+`(a (,b `,,c) d)
+
+(dig (a ((inject b) (dig (inject 2 c))) d))
+```
+
+You may notice the (INJECT 2 ...) form appearing, which is described below.
+
+
+At "level 1", i.e. when only \` , and ,@ are used, and not, say \`\` ,, ,', ,,@ ,',@
+this behaves exactly as usual quasiquotation.
+
+
+The optional N argument
+--------------
+
+All quasiquote-2.0 operators accept optional "depth" argument,
+which goes before the form for human readability.
+
+Namely, (DIG N FORM) increases depth by N instead of one and
+(INJECT N FORM) decreases depth by N instead of one.
+
+```lisp
+(DIG 2 (INJECT 2 A))
+
+; gives the same result as
+
+(DIG (INJECT A))
+```
+
+
+In fact, with ENABLE-QUASIQUOTE-2.0, say, ,,,,,FORM (5 quotes) reads as (INJECT 5 FORM)
+and ,,,,,@FORM as (SPLICE 5 FORM)
+
+
+More examples
+-------------
+
+For fairly complicated example, which uses ,,,@ and OINJECT (see below),
+ see DEFINE-BINOP-DEFINER macro
+in CG-LLVM (https://github.com/mabragor/cg-llvm/src/basics.lisp),
+desire to write which was the initial impulse for this project.
+
+
+For macro, that is not a macro-writing macro, yet benefits from
+ability to inject using `,` and `,@`, consider JOINING-WITH-COMMA-SPACE macro
+(also from CG-LLVM)
+
+```lisp
+(defmacro joining-with-comma-space (&body body)
+  ;; joinl just joins strings in the list with specified string
+  `(joinl ", " (mapcar #'emit-text-repr
+		       (remove-if-not #'identity  `(,,@body)))))
+
+;; the macro can be then used uniformly over strings and lists of strings
+(defun foo (x y &rest z)
+  (joining-with-comma-space ,x ,y ,@z))
+
+(foo "a" "b" "c" "d")
+  ;; produces
+  "a, b, c, d"
+```
+
+
+ODIG and OINJECT and OSPLICE
+----------------------------
+
+Sometimes you don't want DIG's macroexpansion to look further into the structure of
+some INJECT or SPLICE or DIG in its subform,
+if the depth does not match. In these cases you need "opaque" versions of
+DIG, INJECT and SPLICE, named, respectively, ODIG, OINJECT and OSPLICE.
+
+```lisp
+;; here injection of B would occur
+(defun foo (b)
+  (dig (dig (inject (a (inject b))))))
+
+;; and here not, because macroexpansion does not look into OINJECT form
+(defun bar (b)
+  (dig (dig (oinject (a (inject b))))))
+
+(foo 1)
+
+  '(DIG (INJECT (A 1)))
+
+(bar 1)
+
+  '(DIG (OINJECT (A (INJECT B))))
+```
+
+MACRO-INJECT and MACRO-SPLICE
+-----------------------------
+
+Sometimes you just want to abstract-out some common injection patterns...
+That is, you want macros, that expand into common injection patterns.
+However, you want this only sometimes, and only in special circumstances.
+So it won't do, if INJECT and SPLICE just expanded something, whenever it
+turned out to be macro. For that, use MACRO-INJECT and MACRO-SPLICE.
+
+```lisp
+;; with quasiquote-2.0 syntax turned on
+(defmacro inject-n-times (form n)
+  (make-list n :initial-element `(inject ,form)))
+
+(let (x 0)
+  `(dig (a (macro-inject (inject-n-times (incf x) 3)))))
+;; yields
+'(a (1 2 3))
+
+;;and same with MACRO-SPLICE
+(let (x 0)
+  `(dig (a (macro-splice (inject-n-times (incf x) 3)))))
+;; yields
+'(a 1 2 3)
+```
+
+OMACRO-INJECT and OMACRO-SPLICE are, as usual, opaque variants of MACRO-INJECT and MACRO-SPLICE.
+
+Both MACRO-INJECT and MACRO-SPLICE expand their subform exactly once (using MACROEXPAND-1),
+before plugging it into list.
+If you want to expand as much as it's possible, use MACRO-INJECT-ALL and MACRO-SPLICE-ALL,
+which expand using MACROEXPAND before injecting/splicing, respectively.
+That implies, that while subform of MACRO-INJECT and MACRO-SPLICE is checked to be
+macro-form, the subform of MACRO-INJECT-ALL is not.
+
+
+Terse syntax of the ENABLE-QUASIQUOTE-2.0
+-----------------------------------------
+
+Of course, typing all those MACRO-INJECT-ALL, or OMACRO-SPLICE-ALL or whatever explicitly
+every time you want this special things is kind of clumsy. For that, default reader
+of quasiquote-2.0 provides extended syntax
+
+```lisp
+',,,,!oma@x
+
+;; reads as
+'(OMACRO-SPLICE-ALL 4 X)
+```
+
+That is, the regexp of the syntax is
+[,]+![o][m][a][@]<whatever>
+
+As usual, number of commas determine the anti-depth of the injector, exclamation mark
+turns on the syntax, if `o` is present, opaque version of injector will be used,
+if `m` is present, macro-expanding version of injector will be used and if
+`a` is present, macro-all version of injector will be used.
+
+Note: it's possible to write ,!ax, which will read as (INJECT-ALL X), but
+this will not correspond to the actual macro name.
+
+Note: it was necessary to introduce special escape-char for extended syntax,
+since usual idioms like `,args` would otherwise be completely screwed.
+
+
+TODO
+----
+
+* WITH-QUASIQUOTE-2.0 read-macro-token for local enabling of ` and , overloading
+* wrappers for convenient definition of custom overloading schemes
+* some syntax for opaque operations
+
+P.S. Name "quasiquote-2.0" comes from "patronus 2.0" spell from www.hpmor.com
+     and has nothing to do with being "the 2.0" version of quasiquote.
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