[plt-scheme] Are macros a programming language?

On 10/21/07, Grant Rettke <grettke at acm.org> wrote:
> On 10/21/07, Carl Eastlund <cce at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> > Why aren't they Scheme?
>
> My thought was that it generates Scheme, but it is not Scheme.

A macro can generate another macro, so if Scheme is what macros
generate, then macros are part of it.  But this is not the canonical
definition of Scheme anyway.

Macros are not the whole of Scheme, but then the runtime code of
Scheme is not the whole of Scheme either.  Macros are definitely part
of Scheme.

They do not run at runtime.  Perhaps that is your point?  But the
Scheme programming language includes the entire expansion process.

-- 
Carl Eastlund