[wg-camlp4] Matching on concrete syntax (was: Re: Camlp4 uses)

[Hongbo Zhang]

> This might be a matter of taste, but I prefer the PPX version, which I can
> read only by knowing about the Parsetree (which is required anyway to write
> any such code), a normal OCaml library.  The quotation and anti-quotations
> in the Camlp4 version look very noisy, and it relies on a syntax I'm not
> familiar with (revised syntax) and syntactic extensions
> (quotations/antiquotations), with their own conventions ("<:match_case<",
> $lid:$).

This is an interesting point. Actually I have an idea to make it more named
antiquotation more tractable, that's instead of allowing antiquote
everything, only a lower identifier is allowed to be antiquoted. so
{:exp| .... $x ....|} (*allowed *)
{:exp| ...  $(arbitrary expression ) ||} (* Disallowed*)
let a = (arbitrary expression) in
{:exp| ...    $a .... |}                             (* written this way*)

Based on such simplified antiquotation, named antiquotation is no longer
context-sensitive, which means for all syntax categories:
$lid:x    -> `Lid (_loc,x)
$uid:x   -> `Uid (_loc,x)
....

Such rules should not be hard to remember and quite intuitive. In terms of
implementation, I think this is already available in Fan, Camlp4's
antiquotation uses both Ant constructor and string mangling, it make some
time to implement, but should not be too difficult.





>
>
> -- Alain
>
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-- 
-- Regards, Hongbo
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