6.8.23 Inspecting assembly language results

Syntax: assembly-of ?expr

This syntax is mostly for interactive use. Fully expand the given expression in the current lexical environment and apply the compiler’s passes to the resulting core language expression as if to produce a code object; return a list of sublists, each sublist representing assembly language instructions for a code object. The expression is not evaluated, only expanded and compiled to assembly; this means that the expansion side effects are performed.

NOTE Only expressions are expanded and compiled. It makes no sense to give a standalone define syntax to this macro; when a standalone function definition is expanded and optimised: the function is never called, so it is removed.

NOTE At present the return value of this macro is not very human friendly; some preprocessing and a specialised printer are needed.