# Approximating non-standard evaluation like in R, e.g. for plot labels

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/approximating-non-standard-evaluation-like-in-r-e-g-for-plot-labels/41889>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** plotting, macros, r, recipe\
**Created:** [June 22, 2020, 8:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/approximating-non-standard-evaluation-like-in-r-e-g-for-plot-labels/41889 "2020-06-22T20:18:23Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 10

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**Author:** ![johnmyleswhite](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/johnmyleswhite/32/31_2.png) [@johnmyleswhite](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/johnmyleswhite)\
**Post date:** [June 23, 2020, 9:52am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/approximating-non-standard-evaluation-like-in-r-e-g-for-plot-labels/41889/10 "2020-06-23T09:52:12Z")

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I agree with your argument about automatic axis labels. I’d point out that one big challenge with grabbing expressions as arguments via macros is that the expressions have already gone through a lossy pass from concrete syntax tree to abstract syntax tree, so they don’t faithfully reproduce the user’s input.

```julia
julia> String(Symbol(:(x + y))) == String(Symbol(:(x+y)))
true

```

I think the value of something like `@curve` is just that it removes the need to think about making a function. In simple cases this isn’t enough of a gain, but if you’re writing 20 anonymous functions in a row (as you might to define a complex query against a stream of tuples), the value builds up.

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