hanging macros

From: Coby Beck (cbeck_at_mercury.bc.ca)
Date: 05/25/04 

Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 07:50:56 GMT

Dear Group,

I have delibrately ignored eval-when but I have a feeling it may actually be
there for a reason and one I now need to understand.

I have macros that expand into macros that expand into macros and have
thought myself very clever at times. Now I have a problem...

I don't know if code samples would mean much so I will describe the symptoms
and hope it will be enough for a diagnosis.

I load a file that loads a slew of other files that are a database
specification in lisp-macro-speak. They are not compiled since they are not
for running but for reading. They are full of many similar forms and I have
been doing it for months. Now I have a file that hangs on loading. This
happened before in a different file but only on clisp not LW and some
seemingly irrelevant modification made it go away so I happily blamed other
people. Now its back, and apparently my fault and reproducible in an
environment I'm more comfortable in. I can't however get anything more
informative than hanging with no response to ctrl-breaks.

I can grab the offending form and macroexpand it at the top level -
sometimes. I can eval the expansion in two halves. I can not just eval the
form itself. I put a break in the file but could not macroexpand the form
in the debugger. I am confident it is hanging during macroexpansion. These
macros are all defined in other files compiled and loaded before hand.

Is that enough to get some help? Am I breaking some basic rules?

TIA for attention and responses. 

-- 
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ big pond . com")
NB after my recent scolding for not RTFMing I did do that but by the fifth
reading of (defmacro loser ...) I felt sure that was meant as a personal
attack...)

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