The Backquote Macro

The backquote macro makes it possible to build lists and tuples from templates. Used by itself a backquote is equivalent to a regular quote:

> `(a b c)
(a b c)

Like a regular quote, a backquote alone protects its arguments from evaluation. The advantage of backquote is that it is possible to turn on evaluation inside forms which are backquoted using , (comma or "unquote") and ,@ (comma-at or "unquote splice").¹ When something is prefixed with a comma it will be evaluated. For example:

> (set (tuple a b) #(1 2))
#(1 2)
> `(a is ,a and b is ,b)
(a is 1 and b is 2)
> `#(a ,a b ,b)
#(a 1 b 2)

Quoting works with both lists and tuples. The backquote actually expands to an expression which builds the structure the templates describes. For example, the following

`(a is ,a and b is ,b)

expands to

(list 'a 'is a 'and b 'is b)

and

`(a . ,a)

expands to

(cons 'a a)

This:

`#(a ,a b ,b)

expands to

(tuple 'a a 'b b)

They are very useful in macros as we can write a macro definitions which look like the expansions they produce. For example we could define the unless from the previous section as:

(defmacro unless
  ((cons test body) `(if (not ,test) (progn ,@body))))

Here we have extended it allow multiple forms in the body. Comma-at is like comma but splices its argument which should be a list. So for example:

> (macroexpand '(unless (test x) (first-do) (second-do)) $ENV)
(if (not (test x)) (progn (first-do) (second-do)))

As the backquote macro expands to the expression which would build the template it is also very useful in patterns as we can use a template to describe the pattern. Here is the Converting Temperature example rewritten to use backquote in both the patterns and constructors:

(defun f->c
  ((`#(,name #(C ,temp)))
    ;; No conversion needed
    `#(,name #(C ,temp)))
  ((`#(,name #(F ,temp)))
    ;; Do the conversion
    `#(,name #(C ,(/ (* (- temp 32) 5) 9)))))

(defun print-temp
  ((`#(,name #(C ,temp)))
    (lfe_io:format "~-15w ~w C~n" `(,name ,temp))))

Using the backquote macro also makes it much easier to build expressions which we can evaluate with eval. So if we want to import values into the expression to evaluate we can do it like this:

> (set expr '(* x y))                   ;Expression to evaluate
(* x y)
> (eval `(let ((x 17) (y 42)) ,expr))
714

¹ In LFE the backquote is a normal macro and is expanded at the same time as other macros. When they are parsed `thing becomes (backquote thing), ,thing becomes (comma thing) and ,@thing becomes (comma-at thing).