Fan’s quosi-quotation¶

• Fan’s quotation system

Fan’s metaprogramming has a Quotation system similar to Camlp4.

The differences lie in serveral following aspects

• Concrete Syntax

  • For quotation, Fan uses %quot@loc{}, while Camlp4 uses <:quot@loc< >>

  • For antiquotation, Fan uses a single $ or ${..}, while Camlp4 uses $$

  • Fan supports nested quasiquotation, while Camlp4 does not. For example, the following quotation is legal in Fan.

    %exp{ %exp{  $($x) } }
    

    Which is simliar to Common Lisp style macros.

    ``(,,x)
    

• Abstract Syntax Fan adopts polymorphic variants for encoding abstract syntax, there are several major benefits

  • subtyping, for user who wants to reuse part of Fan, the subtyping provides much more refined types
  • constructor overloading, there’s no need to add a prefix for each type
  • polymorphisim, for example, in Fan, to get a location of an ast node, the user only need to write loc_of, without writing loc_of_exp, loc_of_pat, etc. Other ast processing libraries are also more generic compared with Camlp4.
  • unqualified, easier to use.

  The disadvantage:

  Error message is sometimes a problem, however, in Fan, the default quasiquotation will add type annotation automatically for the user, we have an optional quasiquotation without type annotations for advanced user.

  For example:

  (** with annotations *)
  %exp{ 3 }
  (** after expansion *)
  (`Int (_loc, "3") : FAst.exp )
  
  (** without annotations *)
  %exp'{3}
  (** after expansion *)
  `Int (_loc, "3")
  

• Location handling

  From the user’s point of view, Fan has two abstract syntax representations, with or without locations. They have exactly the same semantics except handling locations. The abstract syntax without location is derived from abstract syntax with location. For example, the definition of literal are as follows:

  (** literal with locations [FAst]*)
  type literal =
    [ `Chr of (loc * string)
    | `Int of (loc * string)
    | `Int32 of (loc * string)
    | `Int64 of (loc * string)
    | `Flo of (loc * string)
    | `Nativeint of (loc * string)
    | `Str of (loc * string)]
  
  
  (** literal without locations [FAstN]*)
  type literal =
    [ `Chr of string
    | `Int of  string
    | `Int32 of  string
    | `Int64 of string
    | `Flo of string
    | `Nativeint of string
    | `Str of string]
  

  For ast without locations, the naming convention is a N postfix. Programming abstract syntax without caring about locations is way more easier. Location is important for debugging and meaningful error message, however, some scenarios, for example, code generation, don’t need precise location.

  There are serveral helpful functions for location handling

  • loc_of

    It would fetch location from any type in module FAst

  • Objs.strip_[type]

    For example, Objs.strip_ctyp would strip the location for ctyp, their type signature are as follows:

    utop $ Objs.strip_case;;
    - : FAst.case -> FAstN.case = <fun>
    utop $ Objs.strip_exp;;
    - : FAst.exp -> FAstN.exp = <fun>
    

  • FanAstN.fill_[type]

    It’s opposite to strip

    utop $ FanAstN.fill_exp;;
    - : FLoc.t -> FAstN.exp -> FAst.exp = <fun>
    utop $ FanAstN.fill_case;;
    - : FLoc.t -> FAstN.case -> FAst.case = <fun>
    

  There is also a suite of quasiquotation for ast without locations.

  (** with annotations, [-] means minus locations *)
  %exp-{ 3}
  (** after expansion *)
  (`Int  "3" : FAstN.exp )
  
  (** without annotations *)
  %exp-'{ 3 }
  (** after expansion *)
  `Int  "3"