Question

I am trying to build datalog queries programmatically, but keep running into the problem that I will illustrate with an example function:

(defn test-expr [attribute]
  `[?entity ~attribute ?value]])

When I run (test-expr 3), I would expect the output:

 [?entity 3 ?value]

But instead, I get

[mynamespace/?entity 3 mynamespace/?value]

Which obviously is not what I want. Is there a way to tell clojure “please just quote the list and expand variables I tell you to?”

Answer 1

Yes, there is.

(defn test-expr [attribute]
  `[~'?entity ~attribute ~'?value])

Here you first unquote the syntax quotation and then immediately quote the symbol (~' construct) again. The result is namespace-less symbol.

It is equivalent to the following, which explains how it works:

(defn test-expr [attribute]
  `[~(quote ?entity) ~attribute ~(quote ?value)])