(This is Part 6 of a series of posts on pLisp)
Macros are where pLisp's affinity to Common Lisp is most clearly manifest. The macro definition syntax -- use of backquotes, comma, and comma-at -- pretty much mirrors that of CL:
(defmacro first (lst)
`(car ,lst))
I guess I don't have much else to say in this post, so maybe I'll ruminate on macros in general.
One key lesson I learned while doing macros in pLisp is that macros and closures are identical (as evidenced by the identical code in vm.c that handles both), except for when they're invoked (compile time versus run time). There is nothing special about the 'special' operators used by macros, i.e., comma and comma-at: you can make calls to these operators from closures and derive the same expected behaviour from them as you would when calling them from a macro:
$ ./plisp
Welcome to pLISP. Type 'quit' to exit.
USER> (defun test (lst)
`(first ,lst))
TEST
USER> (test '(1 2 3))
(FIRST (1 2 3))
USER> Huh.
Another aspect of pLisp macros is that they are top-level only, i.e., there is no MACROLET or its equivalent. Shouldn't be too difficult to add this, but I'm not (yet) convinced that their absence is that critical.
