[racket-dev] generic binding forms

I've been wanting a match-for for quite some time, but there are design decisions to be made in such cases. Non-linear patterns are tricky to coordinate - should all clauses of a for/fold be considered part of the same match pattern? How about for*/fold? (My opinions are yes then no). If you have several binding forms that would work together in this way, and not just match patterns, then what is the proper way to set up and interact with such scopes? Do we need something as involved as an internal definition context?

I'll take a closer look at your repo when I come into the lab today.
-Ian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jay McCarthy" <jay.mccarthy at gmail.com>
To: "Stephen Chang" <stchang at ccs.neu.edu>
Cc: "dev" <dev at racket-lang.org>
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2013 8:27:06 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [racket-dev] generic binding forms

On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 10:54 PM, Stephen Chang <stchang at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> Hi dev,
>
> I've noticed that Racket has a lot of convenient binding forms but
> they don't fit together unless someone does it manually (for example
> there's match-let and match-let-values, but no match-for).
>
> As an educational side project, I've been toying around with a
> different way of organizing all the binding forms. What I wanted to do
> is remove the need to manually combine current (and future) binding
> forms by moving the binding "logic" to the binding site itself.
>
> Inspired by the in-vogue generics movement in the Racket world, I've
> hacked together a sort of "generic interface" for bindings (in
> reality, it's just a bunch of syntax properties right now), and
> implemented alternate versions of some of the main binding forms that
> support "instances" of these generic bindings.
>
> To illustrate, here are some test cases for a generic define I
> implemented (~define). I also implemented binding "instances" for
> match and values (which I arbitrarily named $ and ~v below) and I can
> use these forms in (mostly) any binding position that supports generic
> bindings.
>
> ;; functions
>> (~define (f1 x y) (+ x y))
>> (f1 10 20)
> 30
>> (~define (f2 ($ (list x y))) (+ x y))
>> (f2 (list 10 20))
> 30
>
> ;; non-functions
>> (~define a1 100)
>> a1
> 100
>> (~define (~v a2 a3) (values 134 456))
>> a2
> 134
>> a3
> 456
>
> You can nest bind instances too:
>
>> (~define (~v ($ (list b1 b2)) b3) (values (list 22 33) 44))
>> b1
> 22
>> b2
> 33
>> b3
> 44
>
> Does anyone think this is useful? Or is it just a lot of work to save
> a little bit of typing? Has anyone tried something like this before?
>
> It's still very much a work in progress but I figure I would ask for
> some feedback earlier rather than too later, in case there is
> something that makes this infeasible.
>
> Brave souls can look at the hackery here:
> https://github.com/stchang/generic-bind/blob/master/generic-bind.rkt
> (Warning: I'm still trying to figure out all the toys in the Racket
> macro toolbox. For the most part, everything still looks like a
> syntax-rule/case/parse/->datum nail to my hammer.)
>
> Technical question: I couldn't figure out a nice way to implement
> ~let. Essentially, I want a let form where some clauses are let-values
> and some are match-let, but I need to bind them all at the same time,
> like let.

I'd introduce new names to bind them in sequence and then rename
everything after it's all available. My letwreck does something
similar:

http://jeapostrophe.github.io/2013-08-05-letwreck-post.html#%28elem._%28chunk._~3cletwreck-defn~3e~3a1%29%29

> I can't define a ~lambda that works with values because
> functions in racket can't receive values. Anyone have any ideas?
>
> Side observation: Trying to get things to work with multiple return
> values was a pain because they don't compose (as in, functions can
> produce them but can't receive them). Not sure if anything can be done
> about this though.
> _________________________
>   Racket Developers list:
>   http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev



-- 
Jay McCarthy <jay at cs.byu.edu>
Assistant Professor / Brigham Young University
http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay

"The glory of God is Intelligence" - D&C 93
_________________________
  Racket Developers list:
  http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev