Quasi quoting

[Simon Marlow]

On 01/02/2010 14:25, Max Bolingbroke wrote:
> Dominic Orchard and I have come up with a rather radical proposal for
> a redesign of the syntax. There are two principal options:
>
> OPTION 1 (preferred)
> ===============
>
> Advantages:
> 1) QuasiQuotes are revealed as they really are - as splices. In my
> opinion this is much less confusing, because a "quasiquote" is really
> about generating *code*, like a $(), not about generating a *data
> structure* like the existing [|e|], [t|t|] and [d|d|].
> 2) Unifies Template Haskell and QQ into one construct
> 3) QQ looks like "semantic brackets"
> 4) No list comprehension ambiguity
>
> Disadvantages:
> 1) Small syntax changes to QQ and TH. Increased verbosity in some common cases.
>
> Start with GHC Haskell. Remove [|e|], [t|t|], [d|d|] and [e|..|] syntax.
>
> Add this new syntax:
>
> Syntax: [|...|]
> Type: String
> Translation: "..." (i.e. this is an alternative string literal syntax)
>
> Now change the semantics of splice, $(e), like so:
>   1) If e :: Q Exp and we are in an Exp context in the code, run the
> computation and splice the resulting code in

Can you say precisely what it means to be "in an Exp context"?  This is 
a bit like Simon's type-directed name resolution idea, in that it's 
adding in a bit of ad-hoc overloading.  To understand this I think you 
really need to write down (or at least sketch) the type system that 
infers the context: e.g. you have to make clear what information is 
taken into account (type signatures? the results of resolving other 
overloading opportunities?).

>   2) (.. similarly if e :: Q Typ in a Typ context or Q [Decl] in a Decl
> context. NB: this is what we had to do for TH before anyway)
>   3) If e :: QuasiQuote then select the appropriate field from the
> evaluated "e" based on the context, run the Q computation it contains,
> and splice the resulting code in
>
> Where:
>
> data QuasiQuote = QuasiQuote {
>     quoteExp :: Q Exp
>     quotePat :: Q Pat
>   }
>
> Now provide exports from Language.Haskell.TH:
>
> e :: String ->  Exp
> t :: String ->  Type
> d :: String ->  [Decl]

The TH library would have to include a Haskell parser, which presents 
some engineering difficulties.  TH can't be mutually recursive with GHC, 
so either the haskell-src-exts package has to be used or TH and GHC have 
to be merged.

Cheers,
	Simon