Indeed, my main point is not verbosity —it's regularity. I'd rather repeat `setf` in most cases in the name of regularity. That way we spot the semantic difference between lines more easily.
You'd have to use the assignment heavily to justify implementing the `=` syntax, which is barely prettier than the regular `setf` syntax. Plus, you'd probably have to add some annotation anyway, partially defeating the point:
I'm not much for Common Lisp, but I do think Scheme is the prettiest language in which people write ugly code. As such, while I am sympathetic to the virtues of s-expressions, this example is not going to win any hearts or minds. I don't much care for Python's performance or newer features, but your snippet screams for a comparison:
if condition:
a, b, c = c, a, b
a, c, b = b, a, c
That really seems much more clear than the gymnastics my mind has to do manually pairing the assignments inside of psetf. I won't argue that it's objectively better syntax, but I still think it is.
Mind, I haven't tested this, because I don't have CHICKEN Scheme (the dialect this is written in) in front of me, and I may not have matched all the parens on the end, but it should work like this:
(assign-group! (a b c) (c a b))
Giving you your nice assigment syntax you wanted.
That's the nice thing about Lisps: if you don't like it, you can change it.
There is in fact one error in the above macro: well, I think only one: in the map, (lambda (var val) '(var val)) should be (lambda (var val) (list var val))
You'd have to use the assignment heavily to justify implementing the `=` syntax, which is barely prettier than the regular `setf` syntax. Plus, you'd probably have to add some annotation anyway, partially defeating the point: