4.3.4 Macro Bindings

These forms create local macros and “symbol macros.”

Special Form: macrolet (bindings…) forms…

This form is analogous to flet, but for macros instead of functions. Each binding is a list of the same form as the arguments to defmacro* (i.e., a macro name, argument list, and macro-expander forms). The macro is defined accordingly for use within the body of the macrolet.

Because of the nature of macros, macrolet is lexically scoped even in Emacs Lisp: The macrolet binding will affect only calls that appear physically within the body forms, possibly after expansion of other macros in the body.

Special Form: symbol-macrolet (bindings…) forms…

This form creates symbol macros, which are macros that look like variable references rather than function calls. Each binding is a list ‘(var expansion)’; any reference to var within the body forms is replaced by expansion.

(setq bar '(5 . 9))
(symbol-macrolet ((foo (car bar)))
  (incf foo))
bar
     ⇒ (6 . 9)

A setq of a symbol macro is treated the same as a setf. I.e., (setq foo 4) in the above would be equivalent to (setf foo 4), which in turn expands to (setf (car bar) 4).

Likewise, a let or let* binding a symbol macro is treated like a letf or letf*. This differs from true Common Lisp, where the rules of lexical scoping cause a let binding to shadow a symbol-macrolet binding. In this package, only lexical-let and lexical-let* will shadow a symbol macro.

There is no analogue of defmacro for symbol macros; all symbol macros are local. A typical use of symbol-macrolet is in the expansion of another macro:

(defmacro* my-dolist ((x list) &rest body)
  (let ((var (gensym)))
    (list 'loop 'for var 'on list 'do
          (list* 'symbol-macrolet (list (list x (list 'car var)))
                 body))))

(setq mylist '(1 2 3 4))
(my-dolist (x mylist) (incf x))
mylist
     ⇒ (2 3 4 5)

In this example, the my-dolist macro is similar to dolist (see Iteration) except that the variable x becomes a true reference onto the elements of the list. The my-dolist call shown here expands to

(loop for G1234 on mylist do
      (symbol-macrolet ((x (car G1234)))
        (incf x)))

which in turn expands to

(loop for G1234 on mylist do (incf (car G1234)))

See Loop Facility, for a description of the loop macro. This package defines a nonstandard in-ref loop clause that works much like my-dolist.