Article

Debugging macros

Authors:

Ryan Culpepper,

Matthias FelleisenAuthors Info & Claims

GPCE '07: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Generative programming and component engineering

Pages 135 - 144

https://doi.org/10.1145/1289971.1289994

Published: 01 October 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Scheme macros have evolved into a powerful API for the compiler front-end. Like Lisp macros, their predecessors, Scheme macros expand source programs into a small core language; unlike Lisp systems, Scheme macro expanders preserve many desirable properties, including lexical scope and source location. Using such macros, Scheme programmers now routinely develop the ultimate abstraction: embedded domain-specific programming languages.

Unfortunately, Scheme programming environments provide little support for macro development. This lack makes it difficult for programmers to debug their macros and for novices to study the behavior of macros. In response, we have developed a stepping debugger specialized to the concerns of macro expansion. It presents the macro expansion process as a linear rewriting sequence of annotated terms; it graphically illustrates the binding structure of the program as expansion reveals it; and it adapts to the programmer's level of abstraction, hiding details of syntactic forms that the programmer considers built-in.

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Cited By

Lee YGopinathan KYang ZFlatt MSergey ILaemmel RPereira JMosses P(2024)DSLs in Racket: You Want It How, Now?Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering10.1145/3687997.3695645(84-103)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3687997.3695645
Pavletic DVoelter MRaza SKolb BKehrer T(2015)Extensible Debugger Framework for Extensible LanguagesReliable Software Technologies – Ada-Europe 201510.1007/978-3-319-19584-1_3(33-49)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2015
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19584-1_3
Felleisen M(2011)Multilingual component programming in racketACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2189751.204786447:3(1-2)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2189751.2047864

Index Terms

Debugging macros
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers

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Composable and compilable macros:: you want it when?

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cover image ACM Conferences

GPCE '07: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Generative programming and component engineering

October 2007

206 pages

ISBN:9781595938558

DOI:10.1145/1289971

General Chair:
Charles Consel
LaBRI / INRIA, France
,
Program Chair:
Julia Lawall
University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Copyright © 2007 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 01 October 2007

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GPCE '07: Generative Programming and Component Engineering

October 1 - 3, 2007

Salzburg, Austria

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Cited By

Lee YGopinathan KYang ZFlatt MSergey ILaemmel RPereira JMosses P(2024)DSLs in Racket: You Want It How, Now?Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering10.1145/3687997.3695645(84-103)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3687997.3695645
Pavletic DVoelter MRaza SKolb BKehrer T(2015)Extensible Debugger Framework for Extensible LanguagesReliable Software Technologies – Ada-Europe 201510.1007/978-3-319-19584-1_3(33-49)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2015
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19584-1_3
Felleisen M(2011)Multilingual component programming in racketACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2189751.204786447:3(1-2)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2189751.2047864
Felleisen MDenney ESchultz U(2011)Multilingual component programming in racketProceedings of the 10th ACM international conference on Generative programming and component engineering10.1145/2047862.2047864(1-2)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2047862.2047864

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