Are operators and keywords functions?

[north scaffold]

I'm going through basics. I see operators are denoted with arity like +/2 and same for the keywords like if/2. Does this imply they are all functions under the hood?

[tranquil bough]

Yes

Well, many keywords are macros but if it's easier for the time being think of them as functions and it will make the most sense to you.

[north scaffold]

Could you elaborate? I'll hit the topic someday but I'm so curious. You mean, macros are not functions?

[tranquil bough]

Macros are like a meta function.

[north scaffold]

Wow ok, meta-functions

[tranquil bough]

You can use them to build functions and otherwise inject code into the AST.

It's similar to macros in Lisp if you've ever done Lisp.

[north scaffold]

I'm only from JS but that makes sense, thank you @tranquil bough! Elixir is so much fun and community makes it better

[tranquil bough]

If you made a code generator that spit out js that's the equivalent of macros.

I'm sure you've worked with some sort of framework that built html on the fly. That's what a macro can do with Elixir code.

[north scaffold]

Ooh I see, so it's code that writes code, and it mainly writes functions since Elixir is functional, that's exciting!

[rugged hamlet]

macros are functions that operate on AST

[spare wyvern]

you can check out https://astexplorer.net/ to get an idea of what ASTs look like in different languages, there's a Javascript AST generator here too.

In Elixir you can very easily get an AST by adding 'quote'/'unquote' around a block of code (it's really nice, like in JS you have to npm install a library to turn your JS code into AST)

a 'macro' in Elixir is like a function that takes in some Elixir code you wrote, uses 'quote'/'unquote' to turn that Elixir code into an AST, then reorganizes that AST and writes it back out as Elixir code

[compact veldt]

there's https://ast.ninja/ for elixir