macros vs. blocks

[Paul Graham <address@hidden>]

If anyone has good examples of macros that *can't* be 
expressed with a convenient notation for closures, it would
be interesting to see them.  My Smalltalk-hacking friend
Trevor Blackwell has often claimed that macros were
unnecessary if you had blocks, so as long as we're on 
the subject, please send him (and ll1-discuss) your 
counterexamples.

(The point is not mainly to quiet Trevor, of course, but
to understand macros better.)

Thanks!  --pg

--Daniel Weinreb wrote:
> Jonathan Bachrach wrote:
> 
> >matthias,
> >
> >i* never said that having a lightweight lambda notation _eliminates_
> >the need for syntactic abstraction.  i said instead that macros become
> >less necessary.  i said that many of the common** uses of macros can
> >be conveniently expressed in this lightweight lambda notation (e.g.,
> >smalltalk's blocks) without resorting to macros. 
> >
> That is my experience as well.  The vast majority of Lisp macros that I 
> ever wrote could
> (and therefore should) have been done without using macros had there 
> been available
> the proper lambda stuff (lexical scoping, "funargs", and so on).  Macros 
> would still
> have been very useful and important but they would have been used far 
> less often,
> only in cases where something more profound was going on than with-open-file
> or define-zmacs-command or dotimes.  So I think you were both agreeing; 
> there
> was just a small miscommunication.
> 
> 
>