r-wos.org

This is just a short note, because I know I’ll forget it if I don’t write it down somewhere:

Racket’s syntax parameters can be used to safely break hygiene in macros.

As an example, say we want to create a macro define/return that makes an exit-continuation named return available in the function body – so that calling (return value) anywhere in the function does what you would expect from most other languages.

First, the require:

(require racket/stxparam)

Then, we have to define return as a syntax-parameter:

(define-syntax-parameter return (syntax-rules ()))

And we can go on writing our macro:

(define-syntax define/return
  (syntax-rules ()
    [(define/return (name args ...) body ...)
     (define (name args ...)
       (call/ec (lambda (ret)

Here’s the interesting bit: we now have to use syntax-parameterize in order to make ret available under the name return for the function body:

         (syntax-parameterize
             ([return (syntax-rules () [(_ v) (ret v)])])
           (begin body ...)))))]))

So, the macro is done – here’s a (silly) usage example:

-> (define/return (foo x) (+ 1 (return x)))
-> (foo 42)
42

And that’s it, I think. I can’t claim to really understand what’s going on here, but it seems to work pretty well…