Re: [stack] Cat 0.14 Release

Christopher Diggins <[email protected]> wrote:
> Major New Features:
> - There is now a macro rewriting system (
> http://code.google.com/p/cat-language/wiki/Macros ) called MetaCat
> based on Manfred von Thun's paper "A Rewriting System for Joy". This
> system can be used for optimization and to express the semantics of
> the rest of the Cat language.

Impressive.

Can macros be typechecked? Can guards be set to conditionally allow or
disallow the expansion of macros? Are macros specifically checked for
identity, is it assumed, or can macros cause wildly different results?
Can a macro cause type-conformant code to be non-conformant?

I see that it's implementation-dependant whether a macro is allowed to
reduce code. I think that makes sense, but I think that should
probably be formalized a bit, and control over whether a macro reduces
code that it matches be given over to the programmer (possibly with a
simple rule to prevent huge delays). But that's a HUGE project,
obviously.

> Christopher Diggins

-Billy