# Chapter 13. Using Macros to Extend Elixir

## Étude 13-1: Atomic weights

In this étude, you will create a macro that will create a set of functions whose names are the symbols for the elements (all lowercase, as Elixir does not allow a function name to start with an uppercase letter). These functions take no arguments and return the atomic weight of the element, rounded to three decimal places. Thus, your macro will do the moral equivalent of creating functions like these:

def h() do
1.008
end

def he() do
4.003
end

Here is a list of the first 26 elements in a form that may be useful to you.

[{:h, 1.008}, {:he, 4.003},
{:li, 6.94}, {:be, 9.012}, {:b, 10.81}, {:c, 12.011},
{:n, 14.007}, {:o, 15.999}, {:f, 18.998}, {:ne, 20.178},
{:na, 22.990}, {:mg, 24.305}, {:al, 26.981}, {:si, 28.085},
{:p, 30.974}, {:s, 32.06}, {:cl, 35.45}, {:ar, 39.948},
{:k, 39.098}, {:ca, 40.078}, {:sc, 44.956}, {:ti, 47.867},
{:v, 50.942}, {:cr, 51.996}, {:mn, 54.938}, {:fe, 55.845}]

You don’t need to make a complete list of all 92 basic elements unless you feel especially ambitious; the purpose of this étude is to use macros, not to learn chemistry.

Write one module named AtomicMaker that has the defmacro in it, and another module named Atomic that will require AtomicMaker.

Once you have this, you will be able to calculate the atomic weights of molecules:

iex(1)> c("atomic_maker.ex")
[AtomicMaker]
iex(2)> c("atomic.ex")
[Atomic]
iex(3)> import Atomic
nil
iex(4)> water = h * 2 + o
18.015
iex(5)> sulfuric_acid = h * 2 + s + o * 4
98.072
iex(6)> salt = na + cl
58.44

See a suggested solution in Appendix A.

## Étude 13-2: Adding Durations

Presume that you are using a two-tuple to represent a duration of time in minutes and seconds; thus {2, 15} represents a duration of two minutes and fifteen seconds. Write a macro named add in a module named Duration that takes two of these tuples as arguments and returns the total duration. Hint: use pattern matching in the macro definition to separate the elements of the tuple.

iex(1)> require Duration
nil
iex(2)> Duration.add({2,15},{3,12})
{5,27}
iex(3)> Duration.add({2,45},{3,22})
{6,7}

See a suggested solution in Appendix A.

## Étude 13-3: Adding Durations (operator version)

You can use defmacro to create new meanings for mathematical operators. Take the code you wrote for Étude 13-2: Adding Durations and change the first line, which probably looks something like this:

defmacro add (first_operand, second_operand)

and change it to this:

defmacro first_operand + second_operand

You may be wondering how this could possibly compile correctly; after all, you are using the plus sign in your calculations. The reason everything works is that you can’t invoke a macro just after it is defined, so as far as your code is concerned, the plus sign is the normal addition operation as defined in the Kernel module.

You can use this as if it were an ordinary function (just as you can use the Kernel addition operator.

iex(1)> require Duration
nil
iex(2)> Duration.+({1, 27}, {2, 44})
{4,11}
iex(3)> Kernel.+(7, 5)
12

If you want to use the plus sign as an operator for doing addition, you have to import Duration; but that causes a problem, which you see in the following edited output.

iex(4)> import Duration
nil
iex(5)> 3 + 4
** (CompileError) iex:5: function +/2 imported from both
Duration and Kernel, call is ambiguous

The solution is to avoid importing the default addition operator. If you want normal addition, you must ask for it explicitly.

iex(5)> import Kernel, except: [+: 2]
nil
iex(6)> {2,24} + {3, 49}
{6,13}
iex(7)> Kernel.+(7, 5)
12
iex(8)> 7 + 5
** (FunctionClauseError) no function clause matching in Duration.+/2
iex:8: Duration.+/2

There’s a tricky way around this, however. If you used pattern matching in the definition of your macro, you can add another defmacro clause to the Duration module that redefines + for two plain arguments (not two-tuples). That macro will just do a straight addition of its operands. Since you can’t use a macro just after its definition, the macro will use the Kernel's plus sign.

iex(1)> c("duration.ex")
/Users/elixir/code/ch13-03/duration.ex:1: redefining module Duration
[Duration]
iex(2)> import Duration
nil
iex(3)> import Kernel, except: [+: 2]
nil
iex(4)> {5, 46} + {2, 14}
{8,0}
iex(5)> 12 + 9
21

See a suggested solution in Appendix A.