Re: [Chicken-users] unbound variable: or

[Michele La Monaca]

On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 1:53 PM, Peter Bex <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sat, May 30, 2015 at 10:30:38PM -0700, chi wrote:
>> On 05/30/2015 07:02 AM, Peter Bex wrote:
>> > As has been pointed out time and again, it is fundamentally broken.

It would be more correct to say that define-macro has not the feature
set you're interested in, which may or may not be of general interest
depending on the context.

Then again, the proliferation of macros systems demonstrates that
there's no one-fits-all macro system and define-macro, like other
macros, has its own class of applications.  In these contexts,
define-macro is just the perfect macro with the perfect syntax.

What is worse is that define-macro used to be the lingua franca for
macros in Scheme. Right now there's no portable way to write low-level
macros among Scheme implementations (and to some extent macros in
general). Such a paramount feat has been sacrified on the hygiene
altar by its sacerdots. It was 1991 when define-macro was ushered out
the standard and it seems to me that Scheme has not yet recovered a
form of unity regarding macros. I doubt it never will.

Regards,
Michele