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+ <ol class="chapter"><li class="chapter-item expanded affix "><a href="../index.html">The Puck Programming Language</a></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="OVERVIEW.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">1.</strong> Basic Usage</a></li><li><ol class="section"><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">1.1.</strong> Variables and Comments</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">1.2.</strong> Basic Types</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">1.3.</strong> Functions and Calls</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">1.4.</strong> Boolean and Integer Operations</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">1.5.</strong> Conditionals and Control Flow</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">1.6.</strong> Error Handling</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">1.7.</strong> Loops and Iterators</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">1.8.</strong> Modules</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">1.9.</strong> Compile-time Programming</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">1.10.</strong> Async and Threading</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">1.11.</strong> Advanced Types</div></li></ol></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="SYNTAX.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">2.</strong> Syntax</a></li><li><ol class="section"><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">2.1.</strong> Indentation Rules [todo]</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">2.2.</strong> Reserved Keywords</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">2.3.</strong> A Formal Grammar</div></li></ol></li><li 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aria-hidden="true">4.2.</strong> Implicit Modules</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">4.3.</strong> Defining Module Interfaces [todo]</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">4.4.</strong> Defining an External API [todo]</div></li></ol></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="ERRORS.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">5.</strong> Error Handling</a></li><li><ol class="section"><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">5.1.</strong> Errors as Monads</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">5.2.</strong> Errors as Catchable Exceptions</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">5.3.</strong> Errors and Void Functions [todo]</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">5.4.</strong> Unrecoverable Exceptions</div></li></ol></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="ASYNC.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">6.</strong> Async System</a></li><li><ol class="section"><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">6.1.</strong> Threading [todo]</div></li></ol></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="METAPROGRAMMING.html" class="active"><strong aria-hidden="true">7.</strong> Metaprogramming</a></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">8.</strong> Memory Management [todo]</div></li><li><ol class="section"><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">8.1.</strong> Reference Counting Optimizations</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">8.2.</strong> Annotations and Ownership</div></li></ol></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><a href="INTEROP.html"><strong aria-hidden="true">9.</strong> Language Interop [draft]</a></li><li><ol class="section"><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">9.1.</strong> Rust, Swift, Nim</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">9.2.</strong> Java, Kotlin</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">9.3.</strong> Python, Racket, C</div></li></ol></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">10.</strong> Refinement Types [draft]</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">11.</strong> Dependent Types [draft]</div></li><li class="chapter-item expanded "><div><strong aria-hidden="true">12.</strong> Effects System [draft]</div></li></ol>
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+ <h1 id="metaprogramming"><a class="header" href="#metaprogramming">Metaprogramming</a></h1>
+<p>Puck has rich metaprogramming support, heavily inspired by Nim. Many features that would have to be at the compiler level in most languages (error propagation <code>?</code>, <code>std.fmt.print</code>, <code>async</code>/<code>await</code>) are instead implemented as macros within the standard library.</p>
+<p>Macros take in fragments of the AST within their scope, transform them with arbitrary compile-time code, and spit back out transformed AST fragments to be injected and checked for validity. This is similar to what Nim and the Lisp family of languages do.
+By keeping an intentionally minimal AST, some things not possible to express in literal code may be expressible in the AST: in particular, bindings can be injected in many places they could not be injected in ordinarily. (A minimal AST also has the benefit of being quite predictable.)</p>
+<p>Macros may not change Puck's syntax: the syntax is flexible enough. Code is syntactically checked (parsed), but <em>not</em> semantically checked (typechecked) before being passed to macros. This may change in the future<!-- (to require arguments to be semantically correct)-->. Macros have the same scope as other routines, that is:</p>
+<p><strong>function scope</strong>: takes the arguments within or following a function call</p>
+<pre><code class="language-puck">macro print(params: varargs) =
+ for param in params:
+ result.add(quote(stdout.write(`params`.str)))
+
+print(1, 2, 3, 4)
+print &quot;hello&quot;, &quot; &quot;, &quot;world&quot;, &quot;!&quot;
+</code></pre>
+<p><strong>block scope</strong>: takes the expression following a colon as a single argument</p>
+<pre><code class="language-puck">macro my_macro(body)
+
+my_macro:
+ 1
+ 2
+ 3
+ 4
+</code></pre>
+<p><strong>operator scope</strong>: takes one or two parameters either as a postfix (one parameter) or an infix (two parameters) operator</p>
+<pre><code class="language-puck">macro +=(a, b) =
+ quote:
+ `a` = `a` + `b`
+
+a += b
+</code></pre>
+<p>Macros typically take a list of parameters <em>without</em> types, but they optionally may be given a type to constrain the usage of a macro. Regardless: as macros operate at compile time, their parameters are not instances of a type, but rather an <code>Expr</code> expression representing a portion of the <em>abstract syntax tree</em>.
+Similarly, macros always return an <code>Expr</code> to be injected into the abstract syntax tree despite the usual absence of an explicit return type, but the return type may be specified to additionally typecheck the returned <code>Expr</code>.</p>
+<pre><code class="language-puck"></code></pre>
+<p>As macros operate at compile time, they may not inspect the <em>values</em> that their parameters evaluate to. However, parameters may be marked with <code>static[T]</code>: in which case they will be treated like parameters in functions: as values. (note static parameters may be written as <code>static[T]</code> or <code>static T</code>.) There are many restrictions on what might be <code>static</code> parameters. Currently, it is constrained to literals i.e. <code>1</code>, <code>&quot;hello&quot;</code>, etc, though this will hopefully be expanded to any function that may be evaluated statically in the future.</p>
+<pre><code class="language-puck">macro ?[T, E](self: Result[T, E]) =
+ quote:
+ match self
+ of Okay(x): x
+ of Error(e): return Error(e)
+
+func meow: Result[bool, ref Err] =
+ let a = stdin.get()?
+</code></pre>
+<p>The <code>quote</code> macro is special. It takes in literal code and returns that code <strong>as the AST</strong>. Within quoted data, backticks may be used to break out in order to evaluate and inject arbitrary code: though the code must evaluate to an expression of type <code>Expr</code>. <!-- Variables (of type `Expr`) may be *injected* into the literal code by wrapping them in backticks. This reuse of backticks does mean that defining new operators is impossible within quoted code. --></p>
+<pre><code class="language-puck"></code></pre>
+<p>The <code>Expr</code> type is available from <code>std.ast</code>, as are many helpers, and combined they provide the construction of arbitrary syntax trees (indeed, <code>quote</code> relies on and emits types of it). It is a <code>union</code> type with its variants directly corresponding to the variants of the internal AST of Puck.</p>
+<pre><code class="language-puck"></code></pre>
+<p>Construction of macros can be difficult: and so several helpers are provided to ease debugging. The <code>Debug</code> and <code>Display</code> interfaces are implemented for abstract syntax trees: <code>dbg</code> will print a representation of the passed syntax tree as an object, and <code>print</code> will print a best-effort representation as literal code. Together with <code>quote</code> and optionally with <code>static</code>, these can be used to quickly get the representation of arbitrary code.</p>
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