7.2. Macros from within Clojure

In this section, we’ll look at some macros. Many come from the source code of the Clojure language itself; some are from elsewhere. These examples should give you a flavor of macro style and ideas about how to use macros in your own code.

Let’s begin our journey with examples from the Clojure language itself. As mentioned in the previous section, much of Clojure is implemented in Clojure itself, and a lot of that code is macros. This allows the core language to remain small; Clojure has only about a dozen special forms. This approach allows most other features of the language to be developed in Clojure itself. We’ll examine a few macros now.