>> > | Somewhere I seen information that everything that can be done with
>> > | macros
>> > | can be done with lambdas.  Is this correct?

>> >   It is an arbitrary statement devoid of contents and meaning, so
>> >   therefore neither correct nor incorrect.

>> I thought that someone would know anyway. Someone replied to me:
>> "the whole point of macros is that they let you do things that *cannot*
>> be done with functions". I think he is right, please correct me if I'm
>> wrong.

> 1. Anything you can do with macros, you can do with functions.

>    For instance, with functions you can write your own Lisp
>    interpreter or compiler which implements macros, and then
>    use that.

>    For instance, a lot of the things you do with macros could
>    instead be done (at the cost of repeated code and syntactic
>    inconvenience) by packaging up the lumps of code that the
>    macro would work on inside closures and feeding those to
>    ordinary functions.

> 2. Macros are for doing things that can't be done with functions.

>    For instance, extending the syntax of your language without
>    having to reimplement the whole thing.

>    For instance, expressing operations that manipulate lumps of
>    code without needing lots of syntactic noise.

> I suspect that whoever told you "everything that can be done
> with macros can be done with lambdas" meant the second of
> the for-instances under #1 above, in which case "everything"
> goes way too far: macros can do things that go way beyond
> just deciding which arguments to evaluate when. In other
> words, with the meaning I think they intended, the statement
> is wrong. But it's hard to be sure because there's so much
> ambiguity in it.

> The people who've said you won't really understand what's
> going on here without diving in and learning some more
> are probably correct, by the way.