PL: Lecture #23  Tuesday, November 19th

extra Solving the syntax-rules problems

So far it looks like we didn’t do anything new, but the important change is already in: the fact that the results of a macro is a plain Racket expression mean that we can now add more API functionality for dealing with syntax values. There is no longer a problem with running “meta-level” code vs generated runtime code: anything that is inside a syntax (anything that is quoted with a “#'”) is generated code, and the rest is code that is executed when the macro expands. We will now introduce some of the Racket macro API by demonstrating the solutions to the syntax-rules problem that were mentioned earlier.

First of all, we’ve talked about the problem of reporting good errors. For example, make this:

(for 1 = 1 to 3 do ...)

throw a proper error instead of leaving it for lambda to complain about. To make it easier to play with, we’ll use a simpler macro:

(define-syntax fun
  (syntax-rules (->)
    [(_ id -> E) (lambda (id) E)])) ; _ matches the head `fun'

and using an explicit function:

(define-syntax (fun stx)
  (syntax-case stx (->)
    [(_ id -> E) #'(lambda (id) E)]))

One of the basic API functions is syntax-e — it takes in a syntax value and returns the S-expression that it wraps. In this case, we can pull out the identifier from this, and check that it is a valid identifier using symbol? on what it wraps:

(define-syntax (fun stx)
  (syntax-case stx (->)
    [(_ id -> E)
    (if (symbol? (syntax-e (cadr (syntax-e stx))))
      #'(lambda (id) E)
      (error 'fun "bad syntax: expecting an identifier, got ~s"
                  (cadr (syntax-e stx))))]))

The error is awkward though — it doesn’t look like the usual kind of syntax errors that Racket throws: it’s shown in an ugly way, and its source is not properly highlighted. A better way to do this is to use `raise-syntax-error’ — it takes an error message, the offending syntax, and the offending part of this syntax:

(define-syntax (fun stx)
  (syntax-case stx (->)
    [(_ id -> E)
    (if (symbol? (syntax-e (cadr (syntax-e stx))))
      #'(lambda (id) E)
      (raise-syntax-error
        'fun "bad syntax: expecting an identifier"
        stx (cadr (syntax-e stx))))]))

Another inconvenient issue is with pulling out the identifier. Consider that #'(lambda (id) E) is a new piece of syntax that has the supposed identifier in it — we pull it from that instead of from stx, but it would be even easier with #'(id), and even easier than that with just #'id which will be just the identifier:

(define-syntax (fun stx)
  (syntax-case stx (->)
    [(_ id -> E)
    (if (symbol? (syntax-e #'id))
      #'(lambda (id) E)
      (raise-syntax-error
        'fun "bad syntax: expecting an identifier"
        stx #'id))]))

Also, checking that something is an identifier is common enough that there is another predicate for this (the combination of syntax-e and symbol?) — identifier?:

(define-syntax (fun stx)
  (syntax-case stx (->)
    [(_ id -> E)
    (if (identifier? #'id)
      #'(lambda (id) E)
      (raise-syntax-error
        'fun "bad syntax: expecting an identifier"
        stx #'id))]))

As a side note, checking the input pattern for validity is very common, and in some cases might be needed to discriminate patterns (eg, one result when id is an identifier, another when it’s not). For this, syntax-cases clauses have “guard expressions” — so we can write the above more simply as:

(define-syntax (fun stx)
  (syntax-case stx (->)
    [(_ id -> E)
    (identifier? #'id)
    #'(lambda (id) E)]))

This, however, produces a less informative “bad syntax” error, since there is no way to tell what the error message should be. (There is a relatively new Racket tool called syntax-parse where such requirements can be specified and a proper error message is generated on bad inputs.)

We can now resolve the repeat problem — create a (repeat N E) macro:

(define-syntax (repeat stx)
  (define (n-copies n expr)
    (if (> n 0) (cons expr (n-copies (sub1 n) expr)) null))
  (syntax-case stx ()
    [(_ N E)
    (integer? (syntax-e #'N))
    #'(begin (n-copies (syntax-e #'N) #'E))]))

(Note that we can define an internal helper function, just like we do with plain functions.) But this doesn’t quite work (and if you try it, you’ll see an interesting error message) — the problem is that we’re generating code with a call to n-copies in it, instead of actually calling it. The problem is that we need to take the list that n-copies generates, and somehow “plant” it in the resulting syntax. So far the only things that were planted in it are pattern variables — and we can actually use another syntax-case to do just that: match the result of n-copies against a pattern variable, and then use that variable in the final syntax:

(define-syntax (repeat stx)
  (define (n-copies n expr)
    (if (> n 0) (cons expr (n-copies (sub1 n) expr)) null))
  (syntax-case stx ()
    [(_ N E)
    (number? (syntax-e #'N))
    (syntax-case (n-copies (syntax-e #'N) #'E) ()
      [(expr ...) #'(begin expr ...)])]))

This works — but one thing to note here is that n-copies returns a list, not a syntax. The thing is that syntax-case will automatically “coerce” S-expressions into a syntax in some way, easy to do in this case since we only care about the elements of the list, and those are all syntaxes.

However, this use of syntax-case as a pattern variable binder is rather indirect, enough that it’s hard to read the code. Since this is a common use case, there is a shorthand for that too: with-syntax. It looks as a kind of a let-like form, but instead of binding plain identifiers, it binds pattern identifiers — and in fact, the things to be bound are themselves patterns:

(define-syntax (repeat stx)
  (define (n-copies n expr)
    (if (> n 0) (cons expr (n-copies (sub1 n) expr)) null))
  (syntax-case stx ()
    [(_ N E)
    (number? (syntax-e #'N))
    (with-syntax ([(expr ...) (n-copies (syntax-e #'N) #'E)])
      #'(begin expr ...))]))

Note that there is no need to implement with-syntax as a primitive form — it is not too hard to implement it as a macro that expands to the actual use of syntax-case. (In fact, you can probably guess now that the Racket core language is much smaller than it seems, with large parts that are implemented as layers of macros.)

There is one more related group of shorthands that is relevant here: quasisyntax, unsyntax, and unsyntax-splicing. These are analogous to the quoting forms by the same names, and they have similar shorthands: “#`”, “#,” and “#,@”. They could be used to implement this macro:

(define-syntax (repeat stx)
  (define (n-copies n expr)
    (if (> n 0) (cons expr (n-copies (sub1 n) expr)) null))
  (syntax-case stx ()
    [(_ N E)
    (number? (syntax-e #'N))
    #`(begin #,@(n-copies (syntax-e #'N) #'E))]))

[As you might suspect now, these new forms are also implemented as macros, which expand to the corresponding uses of with-syntax, which in turn expand into syntax-case forms.]

We now have almost enough machinery to implement the rev-app macro, and compare it to the original (complex) version that used syntax-rules. The only thing that is missing is a way to generate a number of new identifiers — which we achieved earlier by a number of macro expansion (each expansion of a macro that has a new identifier x will have this identifier different from other expansions, which is why it worked). Racket has a function for this: generate-temporaries. Since it is common to generate temporaries for input syntaxes, the function expects an input syntax that has a list as its S-expression form (or a plain list).

(define-syntax (rev-app stx)
  (syntax-case stx ()
    [(_ F E ...)
    (let ([temps (generate-temporaries #'(E ...))])
      (with-syntax ([(E* ...) (reverse (syntax-e #'(E ...)))]
                    [(x  ...) temps]
                    [(x* ...) (reverse temps)])
        #'(let ([x* E*] ...)
            (F x ...))))]))

;; see that it works
(define (show x) (printf ">>> ~s\n" x) x)
(rev-app list (show 1) (show 2) (show 3))

Note that this is not shorter than the syntax-rules version, but it is easier to read since reverse and generate-temporaries have an obvious direct intention, eliminating the need to wonder through rewrite rules and inferring how they do their work. In addition, this macro expands in one step (use the macro stepper to compare it with the previous version), which makes it much more efficient.

extra Breaking Hygiene, How Bad is it?

We finally get to address the second deficiency of syntax-rules — its inability to intentionally capture an identifier so it is visible in user code. Let’s start with the simple version, the one that didn’t work:

(define-syntax-rule (if-it E1 E2 E3)
  (let ([it E1]) (if it E2 E3)))

and translate it to syntax-case:

(define-syntax (if-it stx)
  (syntax-case stx ()
    [(if-it E1 E2 E3)
    #'(let ([it E1]) (if it E2 E3))]))

The only problem here is that the it identifier is introduced by the macro, or more specifically, by the syntax form that makes up the return syntax. What we need now is a programmatic way to create an identifier with a lexical context that is different than the default. As mentioned above, Racket’s syntax system (and all other syntax-case systems) doesn’t provide a direct way to manipulate the lexical context. Instead, it provides a way to create a piece of syntax by copying the lexical scope of another one — and this is done with the datum->syntax function. The function consumes a syntax value to get the lexical scope from, and a “datum” which is an S-expression that can contain syntax values. The result will have these syntax values as given on the input, but raw S-expressions will be converted to syntaxes, using the given lexical context. In the above case, we need to convert an it symbol into the same-named identifier, and we can do that using the lexical scope of the input syntax. As we’ve seen before, we use with-syntax to inject the new identifier into the result:

(define-syntax (if-it stx)
  (syntax-case stx ()
    [(if-it E1 E2 E3)
    (with-syntax ([it (datum->syntax stx 'it)])
      #'(let ([it E1]) (if it E2 E3)))]))

We can even control the scope of the user binding — for example, it doesn’t make much sense to have it in the else branch. We can do this by first binding a plain (hygienic) identifier to the result, and only bind it to that when needed:

(define-syntax (if-it stx)
  (syntax-case stx ()
    [(if-it E1 E2 E3)
    (with-syntax ([it (datum->syntax stx 'it)])
      #'(let ([tmp E1]) (if tmp (let ([it tmp]) E2) E3)))]))

[A relevant note: Racket provides something that is known as “The Macro Writer’s Bill of Rights” — in this case, it guarantees that the extra let does not imply a runtime or a memory overhead.]

This works — and it’s a popular way for creating such user-visible bindings. However, breaking hygiene this way can lead to some confusing problems. Such problems are usually visible when we try to compose macros — for example, say that we want to create a cond-it macro, the anaphoric analogue of cond, which binds it in each branch. It seems that an obvious way of doing this is by layering it on top of if-it — it should even be simple enough to be defined with syntax-rules:

(define-syntax cond-it
  (syntax-rules (else)
    [(_ [test1 expr1 ...] [tests exprs ...] ...)
    (if-it test1
      (begin expr1 ...)
      (cond-it [tests exprs ...] ...))]
    ;; two end cases -- one with an `else' and one without
    [(_ [else expr ...]) (begin expr ...)]
    [(_) (void)]))

Surprisingly, this does not work! Can you see what went wrong?

The problem lies in how the it identifier is generated — it used the lexical context of the whole if-it expression, which seemed like exactly what we wanted. But in this case, the if-it expression is coming from the cond-it macro, not from the user input. Or to be more accurate: it’s the cond-it macro which is the user of if-it, so it is visible to cond-it, but not to its own users…

Note that these anaphoric macros are a popular example, but these problems do pop up elsewhere too. For example, imagine a loop macro that wants to bind break unhygienically, a class macro that binds this, and many others.

How can we solve this? There are several ways for this:

extra Macros in Racket’s Module System

Not in PLAI

One of the main things that Racket pioneered is integrating its syntax system with its module system. In plain Racket (#lang racket, not the course languages), every file is a module that can provide some functionality, for when you put this code in a file:

#lang racket
(provide plus)
(define (plus x y) (+ x y))

You get a library that gives you a plus function. This is just the usual thing that you’d expect from a library facility in a language — but Racket allows you to do the same with syntax definitions. For example, if we add the following to this file:

(provide with)
(define-syntax-rule (with [x V] E)
  (let ([x V]) E))

we — the users of this library — also get to have a with binding, which is a “FLANG-compatibility” macro that expands into a let. Now, on a brief look, this doesn’t seem all too impressive, but consider the fact that with is actually a translation function that lives at the syntax level, as a kind of a compiler plugin, and you’ll see that this is not as trivial as it seems. Racket arranges to do this with a concept of instantiating code at the compiler level, so libraries are used in two ways: either the usual thing as a runtime instantiation, or at compile time.

extra Defining Languages in Racket

But then Racket takes this concept even further. So far, we treated the thing that follows a #lang as a kind of a language specification — but the more complete story is that this specification is actually just a module. The only difference between such modules like racket or pl and “library modules” as our above file is that language modules provide a bunch of functionality that is specific to a language implementation. However, you don’t need to know about these things up front: instead, there’s a few tools that allow you to provide everything that some other module provides — if we add this to the above:

(provide (all-from-out racket))

then we get a library that provides the same two bindings as above (plus and with) — in addition to everything from the racket library (which it got from its own #lang racket line).

To use this file as a language, the last bit that we need to know about is the actual concrete level syntax. Racket provides an s-exp language which is a kind of a meta language for reading source code in the usual S-expression syntax. Assuming that the above is in a file called mylang.rkt, we can use it (from a different file in the same directory) as follows:

#lang s-exp "mylang.rkt"

which makes the language of this file be (a) read using the S-expression syntax, and (b) get its bindings from our module, so

#lang s-exp "mylang.rkt"
(with [x 10] (* x 4))

will show a result of 40.

So far this seems like just some awkward way to get to the same functionality as a simple library — but now we can use more tools to make things more interesting. First, we can provide everything from racket except for let — change the last provide to:

(provide (except-out (all-from-out racket) let))

Next, we can provide our with but make it have the name let instead — by replacing that (provide with) with:

(provide (rename-out [with let]))

The result is a language that is the same as Racket, except that it has an additional plus “built-in” function, and its let syntax is different, as specified by our macro:

#lang s-exp "mylang.rkt"
(let [x 10] (plus x 4))

To top things off, there are a few “special” implicit macros that Racket uses. One of them, #%app, is a macro that is used implicitly whenever there’s an expression that looks like a function application. In our terms, that’s the Call AST node that gets used whenever a braced-form isn’t one of the known forms. If we override this macro in a similar way that we did for let, we’re essentially changing the semantics of application syntax. For example, here’s a definition that makes it possible to use a @ keyword to get a list of results of applying a function on several arguments:

(define-syntax my-app
  (syntax-rules (@)
    [(_ F @ E ...)
    (list (F E) ...)]
    [(_ x ...) (x ...)]))

This makes the (my-app add1 @ 1 2) application evaluate to '(2 3), but if @ is not used (as the second subexpression), we get the usual function application. (Note that this is because the last clause expands to (x ...) which implicitly has the usual Racket function application.) We can now make our language replace Racket’s implicit #%app macro with this, in the same way as we did before: first, drop Racket’s version from what we provide:

(provide (except-out (all-from-out racket) let #%app))

and then provide our definition instead

(provide (rename-out [my-app #%app]))

Users of our language get this as the regular function application:

#lang s-exp "mylang.rkt"
(let [x (plus 6 10)] (sqrt @ (plus x -7) x (plus x 9)))

Since #%app is a macro, it can evaluate to anything, even to things that are not function applications at all. For example, here’s an extended definition that adds an arrow syntax that expands to a lambda expression not to an actual application:

(define-syntax my-app
  (syntax-rules (@ =>)
    [(_ F @ E ...)
    (list (F E) ...)]
    [(_ x => E ...)
    (lambda x E ...)]
    [(_ x ...) (x ...)]))

And an example of using it

#lang s-exp "mylang.rkt"
(define add1 ((x) => (+ x 1)))
;; or, combining all application forms in one example:
(((x) => (plus x 7)) @ 10 20 30)

Another such special macro is #%module-begin: this is a macro that is wrapped around the whole module body. Changing it makes it possible to change the semantics of a sequence of toplevel expressions in our language. The following is our complete language, with an example of redefining #%module-begin to create a “verbose” language that prints out expressions and what they evaluate to (note the verbose helper macro that is completely internal):


mylang.rkt D 
;; A language that is built as an extension on top of Racket

#lang racket

(provide (except-out (all-from-out racket)
                    let #%app #%module-begin))

(provide plus)
(define (plus x y) (+ x y))

(provide (rename-out [with let]))
(define-syntax-rule (with [x V] E)
                    (let ([x V]) E))

(provide (rename-out [my-app #%app]))
(define-syntax my-app
  (syntax-rules (=> @)
    [(_ x => E ...)
    (lambda x E ...)]
    [(_ F @ E ...)
    (list (F E) ...)]
    [(_ x ...) (x ...)]))

(provide (rename-out [mod-beg #%module-begin]))
(define-syntax-rule (mod-beg E ...)
                    (#%module-begin (verbose E) ...))
(define-syntax verbose
  (syntax-rules ()
    [(_ (define name value)) ; assume no (define (foo ...) ...)
    (begin (define name value)
            (printf "~s := ~s\n" 'name name))]
    [(_ E)
    (printf "~s --> ~s\n" 'E E)]))

And for reference, try that language with the above example:

#lang s-exp "mylang.rkt"
(define seven (+ 3 4))
(define add1 ((x) => (+ x 1)))
(((x) => (plus x seven)) @ 10 20 30)

Macro Conclusions

PLAI §37.5

Macros are extremely powerful, but this also means that their usage should be restricted only to situations where they are really needed. You can view any function as extending the current collection of tools that you provide — where these tools are much more difficult for your users to swallow than plain functions: evaluation can happen in any way, with any scope, unlike the uniform rules of function application. An analogy is that every function (or value) that you provide is equivalent to adding nouns to a vocabulary, but macros can add completely new rules for reading, since using them might result in a completely different evaluation. Because of this, adding macros carelessly can make code harder to read and debug — and using them should be done in a way that is as clear as possible for users.

When should a macro be used?

It is also important to note that macros should not be used too frequently. As said above, every macro adds a completely different way of reading your code — a way that doesn’t use the usual “nouns” and “verbs”, but there are other reasons not to use a macro.

One common usage case is as an optimization — trying to avoid an extra function call. For example, this:

int min(int x, int y) {
  if ( x < y ) then return x; else return y;
}

might seem wasteful if you don’t want a full function call on every usage of min. So you might be tempted to use this instead:

#define min(x,y) x<y ? x : y

you even know the pitfalls of C macros so you make it more robust:

#define min(x,y) (((x)<(y)) ? (x) : (y))

But small functions like the above are things that any decent compiler should know how to optimize, and even if your compiler doesn’t, it’s still not worth doing this optimization because programmer time is the most expensive factor in any computer system. In addition, a compiler is committed to doing these optimizations only when possible (eg, it is not possible to in-line a recursive function) and to do proper in-lining — unlike the min CPP macro above which is erroneous in case x or y are expressions that have side-effects.

Side-note: macros in mainstream languages

Macros are an extremely powerful tool in Racket (and other languages in the Lisp family) — how come nobody else uses them?

Well, people have tried to use them in many contexts. The problem is that you cannot get away with a simple solution that does nothing more than textual manipulation of your programs. For example, the standard C preprocessor is a macro language, but it is fundamentally limited to very simple situations. This is still a hot topic these days, with modern languages trying out different solutions (or giving up and claiming that macros are evil).

Here is an example that was written by Mark Jason Dominus (“Higher Order Perl”), in a Perl mailing list post among further discussion on macros in Lisp vs other languages, including Perl’s source transformers that are supposed to fill a similar role.

The example starts with writing the following simple macro:

#define square(x) x*x

This doesn’t quite work because

2/square(10)

expands to

2/10*10

which is 2, but you wanted 0.02. So you need this instead:

#define square(x) (x*x)

but this breaks because

square(1+1)

expands to

(1+1*1+1)

which is 3, but you wanted 4. So you need this instead:

#define square(x) ((x)*(x))

But what about

x = 2;
square(x++);

which expands to

((x++)*(x++))

or an expensive expression? So you need this instead:

int __MYTMP;
#define square(x) (__MYTMP = (x), __MYTMP*__MYTMP)

but now it only works for ints; you can’t do square(3.5) any more. To really fix this you have to use nonstandard extensions, something like:

#define square(x) ({ typedef xtype = x; xtype xval = x; xval*xval; })

or more like:

#define square(x) \
  ({ typedef xtype = (x); \
    xtype xval = (x); \
    xval*xval; })

And that’s just to get trivial macros, like “square()”, to work.


You should be able to appreciate now the tremendous power of macros. This is why there are so many “primitive features” of programming languages that can be considered as merely library functionality given a good macro system. For example, people are used to think about OOP as some inherent property of a language — but in Racket there are at least two very different object systems that it comes with, and several others in user-distributed code. All of these are implemented as a library which provides the functionality as well as the necessary syntax in the form of macros. So the basic principle is to have a small core language with powerful constructs, and make it easy to express complex ideas using these constructs.

This is an important point to consider before starting a new DSL (reminder: domain specific language) — if you need something that looks like a simple DSL but might grow to a full language, you can extend an existing language with macros to have the features you want, and you will always be able to grow to use the full language if necessary. This is particularly easy with Racket, but possible in other languages too.


Side note: the principle of a powerful but simple code language and easy extensions is not limited to using macros — other factors are involved, like first-class functions. In fact, “first class”-ness can help in many situations, for example: single inheritance + classes as first-class values can be used instead of multiple inheritance.