Clojure defmacro loses metadata

Question

I am trying to create a little Clojure macro that defs a String with a type hint:

(defmacro def-string [name value]
  `(def ^String ~name ~value))

(def-string db-host-option "db-host")

When I macroexpand it, the type hint is lost:

(macroexpand '(def-string db-host-option "db-host"))
;=> (def db-host-option "db-host")

Never mind the wisdom of type hinting this.

Why is the macro losing the metadata? How do I write this macro, or any that includes metadata?

Egerton

Answer 1

^ is a reader macro. defmacro never gets to see it. The hint is put on the list (unquote name). Compare for example (meta ^String 'x) with (meta ' ^String x) to see the effect.

You need to put the hint on the symbol.

(defmacro def-string
  [name value]
  `(def ~(vary-meta name assoc :tag `String) ~value))

And the usage:

user=> (def-string foo "bar")
#'user/foo
user=> (meta #'foo)
{:ns #<Namespace user>, :name foo, :file "NO_SOURCE_PATH", :line 5, :tag java.lang.String}

Stephenstephenie

Ahh! Of course, reader macros get evaluated before defmacros. Thanks. – Egerton

Answer 2

Metadata doesn't show up in a macroexpand since it's supposed to be "invisible".

If the macro is correct (which it isn't) you should be able to call (meta #'db-host-option) to inspect the meta data on the var.

Note that (def sym ...) inserts metadata on the var that it receives from the symbol. But ^Tag ~name sets the meta data on ~name (unquote name), not on the passed in symbol bound to name. It can't do anything else since ^Tag ... processing is done by the reader, which is already finished once macro expansion starts.

You want something like

(defmacro def-string [name value]
  `(def ~(with-meta name {:tag String}) ~value))


user> (def-string bar 1)
#'user/bar
user> (meta #'bar)
{:ns #<Namespace user>, :name bar, :file "NO_SOURCE_FILE", :line 1, :tag java.lang.String}

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