[Haskell-cafe] some ideas for Haskell', from Python

Job Vranish jvranish at gmail.com
Wed Jan 14 13:23:09 EST 2009


On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Tim Wawrzynczak
<inforichland at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Having an import/module feature like this would replace almost all cases where someone might wish for a macro system for Haskell.
>
> Don't say that until you've tried Lisp macros... read some of Paul Graham's essays or try some Common Lisp for yourself... macros can be an incredibly powerful tool, but "macros" from C, etc. aren't really macros, they're more like find-and-replace expressions :)

You're probably right.
I've played around with LISP macros a little, but it seems that most
of the cases where you would use a macro in LISP you don't need one in
haskell due to lazy evaluation.  Although I haven't played around with
them enough to say much one way or another.

Do you know of a particular example where a macro would be a big help
in haskell?


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