[lispm]

Procedural macros were introduced to Lisp twenty years before CL existed and quasiquotation around ten years before CL existed.

> and the splicing unquote is less efficient than cons in this case

Not sure why that should be the case and why it even matters.

[qwertyuiop924]

True, but as my code aptly demonstrated, procedural macros don't work the same jb all Lisps. Some Lisps don't even have them.

AFAICT, splicing unquote has to traverse the entire result list. Not super relevant in this case.

I don't know why I picked cons, honestly. I guess it just fit ny mental model of what was happening better.

[lispm]

> AFAICT, splicing unquote has to traverse the entire result list. Not super relevant in this case.

Especially since it is usually done once at compile time.

> Some Lisps don't even have them.

Even most Scheme implementations have them.

[qwertyuiop924]

Well, then it's slowing down compilation.

And yes, most schemes have them. I was talking about Picolisp, Newlisp, and Kernel, which don't.

[lispm]

> Well, then it's slowing down compilation.

My five MIPS Lisp Machine did not care. My Lisp implementations on a several hundred times faster processor don't care either.

These languages you list don't have macros.

[qwertyuiop924]

Well, then, if you don't have macros, then you don't have procedural macros, which was my point.

And I didn't say it was a legitimate reason to use cons. I said it technically had better performance. As I stated above, the real reason I used it is because it fit my mental model of what was happening.

[lispm]

> Well, then, if you don't have macros, then you don't have procedural macros, which was my point.

Trivially.

Anyway, I don't consider them to be Lisp dialects anyway. They are new languages, Scheme dialects, scripting languages with parentheses, whatever. The name 'new'LISP says it already.

> I said it technically had better performance.

You thought it had, without actually knowing it.

    CL-USER 36 > (let* ((bar '(1 2 3))
                        (baz `(foo ,@bar)))
                   (eq bar (rest baz)))
    T

So it's not copied and no traverse is needed.

What actually is traversing the code is your IR-macro mechanism. Twice. -> ir-macro-transformer. Which makes it slower both in the interpreter and the compiler.

https://github.com/bnoordhuis/chicken-core/blob/master/expan...

Traverses the code, then calls the handler, traverses it again...

Btw., the code won't win any beauty contests.