I wrote this macro that rewrites e.g. (sum-expr (1 2 3)) as (+ 1 2 3):
(defmacro sum-expr (expr-list)
`(+ ,@expr-list))
=> SUM-EXPR
For example:
(sum-expr ((+ 1 3) (* 3 4) (- 8 4)))
=> 20
How can I define an equivalent function using defun?
As @LeonardoDagnino already mentioned it in comment:
(defun sum-expr (lst)
(apply #'+ lst))
Would be very lispy, but implementation-dependent CALL-ARGUMENTS-LIMIT limits in some implementations the length of lst to 50 as discussed e.g. here .Therefore, the solution with reduce is cleaner.
Sounds like you need to evaluate the expressions in your list, and then reduce the resulting list by the addition function.
We can evaluate lisp expressions with eval, which we can apply to each element of the input list with mapcar.
We can then use reduce on the resulting list to find the sum.
(defun sum-expr (list)
(reduce #'+ (mapcar #'eval list)))
This makes a lot of assumptions about the structure and type of your input, but for a simple problem with well-understood inputs, it should be fine.
(You may be interested in Why exactly is eval evil?)
apply instead of reduce since + already accepts multiple arguments.
eval if you just rely on normal evaluation order, and reduce is what you use for arbitrary lists. Apply is for argument management, not for shoehorning data into rest arguments.
(reduce #'+ ...)is what you want. There is no purpose in having this be a macro.((+ 1 3) (* 3 4) (- 8 4))as an argument to a function. You need to pass either'((+ 1 3) (* 3 4) (- 8 4))or(list (+ 1 3) (* 3 4) (- 8 4)). The first one needs a more complex solution; the latter is simpler