[r6rs-discuss] macroexpand

[Dan Muresan]

> You didn't say what macroexpand does so I'll assume that you mean a

I don't think there was much potential for confusion, macroexpand is a
Lisp tradition, right? Well, OK, I mean macroexpand, not macroexpand-1.

> problem is that the result of the expansion is implementation dependent

It doesn't matter what the expanded form is *exactly*; as long as it can
be fed back to the implementation being used, it would be useful. And that
should take zero effort.

It's useful because some macros need to expand their arguments before
processing them; that kind of macro cannot be emulated, and is extremely
useful in certain applications.

In any case, if Lisp has macroexpand, why can't Scheme have it?

Dan Muresan
http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~muresan