Re: the uses of macros (Re: various recent ll1 threads)

[Dan Weinreb <address@hidden>]

   Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 11:03:02 -0400 (EDT)
   From: Matthias Felleisen <matthias@ccs.neu.edu>

   I'd like to propose that there are three disciplined uses of macros: 

Gee, I think there are more valid uses than that, but having not
programmed in Lisp for 14 years I don't remember too many of them.
But one that I used a lot when I wrote an Emacs in Lisp was
something on the order of:

(defcommand move-forward "c-f" "Move the cursor forward by one"
   [insert Lisp code here])

This is a very modest macro that builds up a command dispatch table
and a table of simple online help.  I don't think this falls into
any of your categories.