No household is perfect

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2013-12-04 19:55, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:

> I'll just add a bit of my experience on this.
>
> The coolest side of things is that you get to code a mini-compiler that
> has a very nice backend - D code. More then that you get optimizer and
> such for free. Then you only do the fun stuff - your frontend, and if it
> wasn't for CTFE speed/stability the experience is _very_ pleasant.

With AST macros it would be the same thing, just that you don't need to 
code the mini-compiler. It's already done for you.

> Compare that with writing a fully fledged JIT compiler for say, regex
> patterns. Don't forget to account that you'd need to port it to X
> architectures times Y OS ABIs and generate code of at least moderate
> quality.
>
> JIT would have the benefit of being usable for patterns not known ahead
> of time though.

AST macros would generate a new AST, no need to create a JIT compiler. 
The advantage of AST macros is that the compiler doesn't need to re-lex 
and re-parse the result.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg