The "should we, shouldn't we" debate seems to be yet another sterile academic debate from my perspective, but maybe I'm missing something. Whilst I remember making a few rods for my own back with the C macro facility, mostly related to writing macros that had side-effects, I have also seen them put to very good use.

Does anyone with a strong opinion against adding macro facilities care to give a few reasons?

On the other hand, I'd also like to see a few examples of what people would use a macro facility for in Perl. Assuming that p5 had a C-like 

#define name(arg[,arg]) {\
some code here\
}

[download]

I think that's roughly the syntax

What would you use it for?

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller


In reply to Re: Macros, LFSPs and LFMs by BrowserUk
in thread Macros, LFSPs and LFMs by stefp

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.