Defining a macro that does nothing

Question

I am defining a macro that accepts any number of arguments that actually do nothing. From a previous discussion, it was pointed out to me that a macro does not evaluate its arguments, which is beneficial to me because I could pass anything, with Emacs Lisp not trying to evaluate things that are ignored anyway.

This is the first time I delve into macros. Can one loop through the arguments with dolist when using &rest args ?

(defmacro ndkat (&rest _args)
  "No matter how many arguments are passed, no actions will be
performed.  Returns 'nil'."

  nil)

Yes, the macro code can loop through the unevaluated elements in the list bound to your `&rest` argument, `_args`. — Drew, Aug 05 '23 at 21:10

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 05 '23 at 06:27

0

What about

(defmacro ndkat (&rest _args))

Then in scratch buffer (ndkat (message "hello" "world") 123) with C-x C-e after the last ) does nothing.

answered Aug 05 '23 at 06:27

Maxim Kim

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There is no need to return `nil` ? – Dilna Aug 05 '23 at 06:31
I believe if you have docstring then `nil` is needed, otherwise docstring is returned. – Maxim Kim Aug 05 '23 at 06:34

Defining a macro that does nothing

1 Answers1