Creating symbols inside of macros

General Usage
,
1

How to create symbols (and new types) inside of macros?

macro mymacro(arg)
  quote
    structname = Symbol($arg,"ext")
    struct structname
    end
  end
end

In this example, I am expecting a call @mymacro "Foo" to define a new struct type Fooext.

2

I’m on my phone now, so I cannot test things. But @macroexpand is your friend to test things out. Try escaping your quote: esc(quote ... end).
This would be my guess

macro mymacro(arg)
    structname = Symbol($arg,"ext")
    esc(quote
      struct $structname
      end
  end)
end
1 Like
3

Hi @favba, I think the issue is somewhere else, aren’t macros supposed to return quotes?

4

No. Macros are supposed to return an expression based on the inputs (expressions) it gets. Most macros won’t just be a quote, there will be code outside it and not all of the processing will be done in the quote.

@favba is totally correct here though a slightly more preferred version would be

macro mymacro(arg)
    quote
        struct $(esc(Symbol(arg, "ext"))) # This is spliced inside the quote, you can of course hoist it into `structname` **OUTSIDE** the quote as in @favba's answer.
        end
    end
end
3 Likes