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Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 14:51:40 +0200
From: Daniel de Rauglaudre <daniel.de_rauglaudre@inria.fr>
To: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Again on pattern matching and strings
Message-ID: <20021024145140.J12351@verdot.inria.fr>
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In-Reply-To: <3DB7E8B8.80200@baretta.com>; from alex@baretta.com on Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 02:34:00PM +0200
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Hi,

On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 02:34:00PM +0200, Alessandro Baretta wrote:
> 
> Does "evaluated at parse time" mean that you define a syntax 
> tree transformation as opposed to a character stream 
> transformation?

Right. The general idea of Camlp4, anyway, is manipulation of
syntax tree. Every syntax extension work with syntax trees, not
character stream.

The extension DEFMACRO or DEFINE, which I propose to add in Camlp4,
uses correct syntax trees. The syntax of this construction uses the
normal lexing and parsing of OCaml expressions. The substitutions of
possible parameters will be scans of the syntax trees and tree
substitution.

(Virtual) Example:

   DEFMACRO f(x) (x, x)
   f(3+y)
   function f(2) -> 0

would be interpreted as:
   (3+y, 3+y)
   function (2, 2) -> 0

We may be interested in "inlining" with this system: but in this
case, if we accept any expression, it would not work in pattern
position. Example:
   DEFMACRO f(x) (x+3)
   f(2)
would be interpreted as:
   2+3
but
   function f(2) -> 0
has no meaning.

> This is more or less what I had in mind. The only problem 
> with this scheme is probably with compile-time error 
> reporting. If this is not somehow linked with the compiler, 
> how will the compiler be able to tell us that that something 
> we wrote makes no sense?

Indeed if the macro is a complicated expression, the typing error
might be difficult to understand. As location, I can only underline
all the macro call:

   DEFMACRO f(x) (x, "hello")
   function
     (x, y) -> (x + 2, y + 5)
   | f(3) -> (22, 35)
     ^^^^
This pattern has type string and is used with type int.

Something like that...

-- 
Daniel de RAUGLAUDRE
http://cristal.inria.fr/~ddr/
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