The introduction of definitional facilities into higher level programming languages

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a scheme for employing definitional or "macro" features in a higher level programming language. The emphasis will not be on defining the syntactic augments and precise interpretation of such features in any particular programming language and/or operating environment but, rather, on developing the compiler mechanisms for handling the definition and call of such macros and then indicating the kinds of extensions one might propose to current programming languages in order to usefully employ these kinds of facilities.