[Python-Dev] A Hygienic Macro System in Python?

[Samuele Pedroni]

From: Skip Montanaro <skip@pobox.com>
> 
> (Tom, you gave up way too easily!  Hint for the next time: post to
> comp.lang.python instead of the python-dev mailing list.  There are at least
> 20 or 30 people there who will gladly provide positive support for just
> about any language change proposal.  The lifetime of proposals posted there
> thus tends to be correspondingly much longer than those that originate
> here. :-)

unfair <wink>. IMO it is just that CL,Dylan and Common Lisp
did not get macros overnight. And btw the respective communities
have dissenting opinion about macros.  
So maybe a starting point for a discussion would be 
a bunch of tentative but concrete implementation of macros,
that tries to be pythonic. Scheme is not pythonic <wink>.

> 
> But, since Tom has given up more or less and Tim has diverted the thread to
> his own nefarious uses, I will note that the try/finally lock idiom does get
> tedious.  Using the same argument as "if Guido wanted 'unless' he'd add it
> to the language", I think that if this is important enough, it's important
> enough to add to the language.  I think a "lock" keyword would be
> appropriate:
> 
>     lock somelock:
>         do stuff
> 
> The biggest problem I found with the try/finally lock idiom was that "do
> stuff" can tend to get long, so the vertical distance between lock.acquire()
> and lock.release() can be substantial.  a lock statement/clause/macro would
> remove the need to worry about that visual distance.

seems nevertheless ad-hoc <wink>. Then maybe

useres ini,consume:
  stuff

=>

ini()
try:
  stuff
finally:
  consume()

useres somelock.acquire,somelock.release:
 stuff

<wink> x 2

regards.