1. MACRO
[techspeak] A name (possibly followed by a formal
arg list) that is equated to a text or symbolic
expression to which it is to be expanded (possibly with the substitution of
actual arguments) by a macro expander. This definition can be found in any
technical dictionary; what those won't tell you is how the hackish
connotations of the term have changed over time.The term macro originated in
early assemblers, which encouraged the use of macros as a structuring and
information-hiding device. During the early 1970s, macro assemblers became
ubiquitous, and sometimes quite as powerful and expensive as
HLLs, only to fall from favor as improving compiler
technology marginalized assembler programming (see
languages of choice). Nowadays the term is most often used in connection
with the C preprocessor, LISP, or one of several special-purpose languages
built around a macro-expansion facility (such as TeX or Unix's [nt]roff
suite). Indeed, the meaning has drifted enough that the collective macros is now sometimes used for code in any
special-purpose application control language (whether or not the language
is actually translated by text expansion), and for macro-like entities such
as the keyboard macros supported in
some text editors (and PC TSR or Macintosh INIT/CDEV keyboard
enhancers).
2. MACRO
Large. Opposite of micro-. In the
mainstream and among other technical cultures (for example, medical people)
this competes with the prefix mega-, but hackers
tend to restrict the latter to quantification.
|
Definitions of MACRO 
