Syntactic Hooks for Hygienic Macros

SCM provides a synthetic identifier type for efficient implementation of hygienic macros (for example, syntax-rules see Macros) A synthetic identifier may be inserted in Scheme code by a macro expander in any context where a symbol would normally be used. Collectively, symbols and synthetic identifiers are identifiers.

— Function: identifier? obj

Returns #t if obj is a symbol or a synthetic identifier, and #f otherwise.

If it is necessary to distinguish between symbols and synthetic identifiers, use the predicate symbol?.

A synthetic identifier includes two data: a parent, which is an identifier, and an environment, which is either #f or a lexical environment which has been passed to a macro expander (a procedure passed as an argument to procedure->macro, procedure->memoizing-macro, or procedure->syntax).

— Function: renamed-identifier parent env

Returns a synthetic identifier. parent must be an identifier, and env must either be #f or a lexical environment passed to a macro expander. renamed-identifier returns a distinct object for each call, even if passed identical arguments.

There is no direct way to access all of the data internal to a synthetic identifier, those data are used during variable lookup. If a synthetic identifier is inserted as quoted data then during macro expansion it will be repeatedly replaced by its parent, until a symbol is obtained.

— Function: identifier->symbol id

Returns the symbol obtained by recursively extracting the parent of id, which must be an identifier.

4.9.7 Use of Synthetic Identifiers

If an identifier returned by this version of gentemp is inserted in a binding position as the name of a variable then it is guaranteed that no other identifier (except one produced by passing the first to renamed-identifier) may denote that variable. If an identifier returned by gentemp is inserted free, then it will denote the top-level value bound to its parent, the symbol named “An unlikely variable”. This behavior, of course, is meant to be put to good use:

Defines a macro which may always be used to refer to the top-level binding of foo.

If a lexical environment is passed as the second argument to renamed-identifier then if the identifier is inserted free its parent will be looked up in that environment, rather than in the top-level environment. The use of such an identifier must be restricted to the lexical scope of its environment.

There is another restriction imposed for implementation convenience: Macros passing their lexical environments to renamed-identifier may be lexically bound only by the special forms let-syntax or letrec-syntax. No error is signaled if this restriction is not met, but synthetic identifier lookup will not work properly.

In order to maintain referential transparency it is necessary to determine whether two identifiers have the same denotation. With synthetic identifiers it is not necessary that two identifiers be eq? in order to denote the same binding.

— Function: identifier-equal? id1 id2 env

Returns #t if identifiers id1 and id2 denote the same binding in lexical environment env, and #f otherwise. env must either be a lexical environment passed to a macro transformer during macro expansion or the empty list.
For example,
          (define top-level-foo?
            (procedure->memoizing-macro
             (let ((foo-name (renamed-identifier 'foo #f)))
               (lambda (exp env)
                 (identifier-equal? (cadr exp) foo-name env)))))
          
          (top-level-foo? foo)  ⇒ #t
          
          (let ((foo 'local))
            (top-level-foo? foo))  ⇒ #f

— Function: @macroexpand1 expr env

If the car of expr denotes a macro in env, then if that macro is a primitive, expr will be returned, if the macro was defined in Scheme, then a macro expansion will be returned. If the car of expr does not denote a macro, the #f is returned.

— Function: extended-environment names values env

Returns a new environment object, equivalent to env, which must either be an environment object or null, extended by one frame. names must be an identifier, or an improper list of identifiers, usable as a formals list in a lambda expression. values must be a list of objects long enough to provide a binding for each of the identifiers in names. If names is an identifier or an improper list then vals may be, respectively, any object or an improper list of objects.

— Special Form: syntax-quote obj

Synthetic identifiers are converted to their parent symbols by quote and quasiquote so that literal data in macro definitions will be properly transcribed. syntax-quote behaves like quote, but preserves synthetic identifier intact.

— Special Form: the-macro mac

the-macro is the simplest of all possible macro transformers: mac may be a syntactic keyword (macro name) or an expression evaluating to a macro, otherwise an error is signaled. mac is evaluated and returned once only, after which the same memoizied value is returned.
the-macro may be used to protect local copies of macros against redefinition, for example:
          (@let-syntax ((let (the-macro let)))
             ;; code that will continue to work even if LET is redefined.
                  ...)

— Special Form: renaming-transformer proc

A low-level “explicit renaming” macro facility very similar to that proposed by W. Clinger [Exrename] is supported. Syntax may be defined in define-syntax, let-syntax, and letrec-syntax using renaming-transformer instead of syntax-rules. proc should evaluate to a procedure accepting three arguments: expr, rename, and compare. expr is a representation of Scheme code to be expanded, as list structure. rename is a procedure accepting an identifier and returning an identifier renamed in the definition environment of the new syntax. compare accepts two identifiers and returns true if and only if both denote the same binding in the usage environment of the new syntax.

4.9.6 Syntactic Hooks for Hygienic Macros

4.9.7 Use of Synthetic Identifiers