A lot of people gave me a kick in the pants for not having hygenic macros ala Common Lisp. So I thought how about both? A regular old hackish macro is defined in Heron as follows:

  define assert : 
  {
    if (#e) { 
      throw assertion_error($fxn_name);
    }     
  };

Now the question is how should I syntactically differentiate a hygenic macro? Perhaps:

  1) safe_define : /* boring hygenic macro */;
  2) hygenic_define : /* boring hygenic macro */;
  3) clean_define : /* boring hygenic macro */;

 
  define assert : 
  {
    if ($e) {
      throw assertion_error($_context::fxn_name);
    }     
  };