Re: Camlp4's (lack of) hygiene (was Re: Macros)

[John Prevost <prevost@maya.com>]

Somebody on clf pointed out the other bigger part of hygiene, which is
allowing symbols which *are* bound in the "macro" source to be
statically bound to that value when used.  Unfortunately, I don't
think this is a change that's at all simple for camlp4, since it
requires very tight coupling with the compiler.

Kind of sad, since for some of the most easy useful things you could
do (providing little syntaxes for various datastructures via
quotations) depend on referring to values from the ernvironment.  As
an example, the quotations in q_MLast need Pcaml to be opened, or they
won't work.

I think making changes to allow good gensymming might still be
desirable--but I'm sad that this bigger issue can't really be dealt
with without a major merge between camlp4 and ocaml itself.  A merge
which does not seem likely to happen.

John.