Re: Re: help required w.r.t " vardef "

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 06:55 10/04/2004, you wrote:
>Thankx Hans,
>
>But why does this work with "def" and not with "vardef" . "list" is just a 
>macro name i've used.
>
>And "A,B,C,A" is just the replacement text I want when I call the macro 
>"list".

from the name vardef you can deduce that it acts like a var; see Jonathan 
Nicholl's excellent explanation for more details,

in general a vardef is used in situations where you want to do a lot of 
things and only get back teh result

n := 0 ;

def blabla (expr x) =
   (1+x)
enddef ;

a := blabla(1) ; % a := (1+1)

def blabla (expr x) =
   n := n + 1 ;
   (1+x)
enddef ;

a := blabla(1) ; % fails, since now the expansion becomes visible: a := n 
:= n+1 ; (1+x)

vardef blabla (expr x) =
   n := n + 1 ;
   (1+x)
enddef ;

a := blabla(1) ; % a := (1+1)

also, vardef has grouping built in

>Is there any other way of doing this?

not that i know of

Hans