c-mera VS datatype99

Arguably Pacman Clone - it uses WISP (non s-exps syntax for any lisp) + C-Mera which is some kind of mix of C and CL, and is written mostly in CL.

c-mera does exist.

Thanks, you're right. I chose JS because it is so well-known, but I think it does have some other advantages as well. For example, if you need to run a lot of compatibility test commands, or need to generate code via external programs, or even make network requests to get config values or something, you can do all of that in parallel with JS async instead of sequentially like configure. You might find https://github.com/kiselgra/c-mera interesting. It's similar to this project but uses Lisp and a unified syntax.

I used https://github.com/kiselgra/c-mera for this purpose and it worked very well.

That's a Lisp preprocessor for a non-Lisp language.

If you program in C using the Common Lisp c-mera preprocessor, or any of the other similar systems, it's the same thing.

You're writing everything in S-exps, and the expansions use conses, but the output is C; so that of course cannot call cons at run time.

https://github.com/kiselgra/c-mera

even more interesting are the handful of projects layering lisp style macros on top of C. i've seen several go by over the years; a quick google search brought up c-mera and cmacro.

If you look for lisp-like syntax in C: - cmera https://github.com/kiselgra/c-mera

Sum types and pattern matching have already been hacked together in a preprocessor macro in C; see https://github.com/Hirrolot/datatype99.

It does not. There are people who have implemented such constructs in C code however, for example: https://github.com/Hirrolot/datatype99

Nice reference but with some strange bits:

> Algebraic data types are usually represented using a heap. Because of their non-uniformity, algebraic data types are more difficult to scan.

Using a heap??? We can represent ADTs using stack as well, that's what we usually do in C and Rust.

Shameless plug: https://github.com/Hirrolot/datatype99 (a library of mine that generates type-safe ADTs for pure C99).

I agree; I would especially not recommend abusing macros throughout an application codebase too much. Conceptually, Metalang99 is more of a (sub)language than a library, which also adds some entry barrier. Ideally, I see the application of Metalang99 being used "behind the scenes", e.g., encapsulated in separate code files/libraries such as Datatype99 and Interface99. This is what I (mostly) do in SmolRTSP.

I've done something similar with Datatype99 and Interface99. They are like a macro eDSL that compiles to C. The first one features algebraic data types, the second one features interfaces.

If you need a bit more high-level constructions, you can use the Datatype99 and Interface99 libraries. The former provides polymorphism over data, the latter -- over behaviour (I am the creator of these libraries).

OP, you might find datatype99 and its sibling projects interesting, though they mostly leverage the C preprocessor without going all the way towards defining a new language.

You can use Datatype99 to represent your AST tagged union conveniently.

Compared to plain C, you have ADTs which help from day to day programming. You can bring them to C (https://github.com/Hirrolot/datatype99) but I don't know if the Linux guys would allow it.