Re: instead of SCSH

[Tom Lord]

   From: Michael Livshin <address@hidden>

   what's wrong in macros, in your opinion?

In general?  Nothing definitive -- just lots of little annoyances that
add up.  For one thing, not using them much makes code easier to read
because you only have to keep a fixed set of evaluation rules in mind.


   > Process forms have a natural representation as lists and
   > can be interpreted at run-time without any serious 
   > performance penalty (as far as I can tell).
   > 
   > If process forms are lists, programs can build them 
   > at run-time, which is sometimes useful.

   um.  do you want to say that providing a process list evaluator is
   somehow better than just using eval?

Yes.

   are you worried about security or something else?

Security, sure.

Robustness, too -- if I read fragments of a process form from a file,
say, the rules for well-formedness of those fragments are stricter
than what the evaluator will enforce.

Simplicity of implementation, too.

-t