[clean-list] "code is data" and Clean

[alanh@dcs.kcl.ac.uk]

On Wednesday 5-3-03, R T Happe wrote

> 
> PS on the merits of syntactic extensibility
> 
> Those who wonder when and why powerful macros may be useful may want to
> have a look at some examples:

Here are some more references on adventurous forms of programming which
would probably not get past a decent type system:

  Luca Cardelli
  A polymorphic calculus with Type: Type
  DEC Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, U.S.A.
  January 1986
  
  Brian Cantwell Smith
  Reflection and Semantics in LISP
  Report No. CSLI-84-8
  Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford, U.S.A.
  
Not many programming languages have facilites which help coding of the
ideas in these references.  LISP with its "eval" is one of the few.
The designers of Clean probably never meant it to be used for such
purposes.

Alan Hutchinson
Department of Computer Science
King's College London