Re: Using setq to obtain a symbol from a list, so that I can assign a function to it

[David Combs]

In article <874p9twxc3.fsf@hubble.informatimago.com>,
Pascal Bourguignon  <pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:
>Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>
>> On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:28:03 -0700 (PDT) srinik001@hotmail.com wrote: 
>>
>> s> So, I am trying to write a tool that will enable me to write specific
>> s> XML files by prompting me to enter values. Here is how I am trying to
>> s> do it.
>>
>> You may want to look at the various templating packages available, in
>> case one of them does what you want.  Check out skeleton.el in
>> particular (http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/SkeletonMode for some
>> examples) since any element of the template can itself be a template.
>> That will probably save you a lot of time.
>>
>> Anytime you find yourself auto-generating functions you should wonder if
>> your data structure could be better (sometimes the answer is 'no' :)
>
>Well, I wouldn't be so categoric.  You could start by writting an
>"interpreter" of your data, but generating lisp is like implementing
>the "compiler", so I don't see much difference.  It's so easy to do it
>in lisp, that you can go directly to the "compiler".
>
>-- 
>__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

Pascal,

If by chance you have (tutorial?) examples of this idea perhaps you
could post them here, or point us to a site (one of yours?) that
does have such tutorial examples.

Of course various text-books contain an example or two, via hairy
(*extremely* hairy) macros, but it'd be nice to see a whole bunch
in one place, compared, and so on.

As I understand it, lisp is *the* language for doing such things --
or has that changed over the years with the introduction (decades ago)
of various functional languages?


Thanks!

David