I tried to wrap a lisp expression by another lisp expression. I guess, a macro should do it, but I don't get the trick. Can someone help me, who knows how to do it?
My actual aim is to write a macro which wraps a batch of with-open-file expressions around some macro-body code.
(I want to write a script/program, which opens one or two input files, process them line by line, but also outputs the processing result in several different independent output files. For that I would love to have the with-open-file macro calls piled up around the code which processes and writes to the independent output files - all opened for the macro-body code).
Since the with-open-file requires a symbol (handler) for the input or output stream and the path variable to the output (or input) file, and some additional information (direction of the file etc.), I want to put them into lists.
;; Output file-paths:
(defparameter *paths* '("~/out1.lisp" "~/out2.lisp" "~/out3.lisp"))
;; stream handlers (symbols for the output streams)
(defparameter *handlers* '(out1 out2 out3))
;; code which I would love to execute in the body
(print "something1" out1)
(print "something2" out2)
(print "something3" out3)
How I would love the macro to be called:
(with-open-files (*handlers* *paths* '(:direction :output :if-exists :append))
;; the third macro argument should be what should be passed to the
;; individual `with-open-file` calls
;; and it might be without `quote`-ing or with `quote`-ing
;; - is there by the way a good-practice for such cases? -
;; - is it recommended to have `quote`-ing? Or how would you do that? -
;; and then follows the code which should be in the macro body:
(print "something1" out1)
(print "something2" out2)
(print "something3" out3))
To what the macro call should expand:
(with-open-file (out1 "~/out1.lisp" :direction :output :if-exists :append)
(with-open-file (out2 "~/out2.lisp" :direction :output :if-exists :append)
(with-open-file (out3 "~/out3.lisp" :direction :output :if-exists :append)
(print "something1" out1)
(print "something2" out2)
(print "something3" out3))))
As one step, I thought I have to make an s-expression wrap another s-expression.
My first question was: How to wrap an s-expression by another s-expression? But I just couldn't manage it already at this point. All I could do was to write a function which just spills out an un-executed expression. How to write a macro which does the same but also executes the code after expanding it in this way?
(defun wrap (s-expr-1 s-expr-2)
(append s-expr-1 (list s-expr-2)))
(wrap '(func1 arg1) '(func2 arg2))
;; => (FUNC1 ARG1 (FUNC2 ARG2))
(wrap '(with-open-files (out1 "~/out1.lisp" :direction :output :if-exists :append))
'(with-open-files (out2 "~/out2.lisp" :direction :output :if-exists :append)
(print "something1" out1)
(print "something2" out2)
(print "something3" out3)))
Which gives:
(WITH-OPEN-FILES (OUT1 "~/out1.lisp" :DIRECTION :OUTPUT :IF-EXISTS :APPEND)
(WITH-OPEN-FILES (OUT2 "~/out2.lisp" :DIRECTION :OUTPUT :IF-EXISTS :APPEND)
(PRINT "something1" OUT1)
(PRINT "something2" OUT2)
(PRINT "something3" OUT3)))
In this way, applying wrap function successively, looping over the input-lists, I could build the code maybe ...
However, these functions would generate only code but don't execute it.
And I would be forced at the end to use the eval function to evaluate the built code ... (But somehow I know this shouldn't be done like this. And I just didn't really understood how to write macros which do such things ... Actually, macros are there for solving exactly such problems ... )
With the execution, I just came into big trouble. And since one cannot call funcall or apply on macros (instead of function-names) I don't see an obvious solution. Did someone had experience with such kind of situations?
And when accomplished wrapping an s-expression in a macro by another s-expression and let it be evaluated, the next question would be, how to process the list to let the code to expand to the desired code and then be evaluated? I just tried hours and didn't came far.
I need help from someone who has experience to write such kind of macros ...