There are a couple of things wrong with your macro. The first is that your (list ,@args) is inside ,(each ...) which is inside `(do ...); you can only have as many unquotes (,s or ,@s) as you have quasiquotes (`s), and you have two within one. The second is that "each" is only run for its side-effects. The return value of "each" is always nil. Thus, even if your macro worked, it would expand to (do nil), which isn't what you want. To replace "each", you want (map func lst), which returns a list where func has been applied to each element of lst, e.g. (map - '(1 2 3)) returns '(-1 -2 -3). In my macro, the function returns a list of the form (report-result ARGUMENT 'ARGUMENT); the `',_ construct means "quote the value of _," since ,_ is within a `. Splicing this (map ...) into the (do ...) block will give you what you want. Is that clear?
Also, a handy tip for debugging macros: (macex1 '(an-expression ...)) will expand the first macro call in (an-expression), which can help you see what's going wrong.
I can't tell you if this is the right place to ask these questions, but having some place for them would definitely be a good thing. I'm usually happy to answer them, though.
Enormously helpful. Thank you. Coming from Blub world, it's been hard for me to think functionally - making a distinction between returning values and side effects.
I don't understand your first point however, as this is a perfectly valid macro:
Nitpick. This is not a good definition (valid, but not good). The problem is something like this:
(double (prn 3))
Try the above in your repl after entering the mac definition; then consider what must be done in order to protect the x. For example, you might notice that the macros in arc.arc have a lot of (w/uniq (...) `(let ...)) forms, even the arguably simpler ones.
