Re: Summary of Dangling Closing Parentheses vs. Stacked Closing Parentheses

Subject: Re: Summary of Dangling Closing Parentheses vs. Stacked Closing Parentheses
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 2000/03/28
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3163239343709562@naggum.no>

* Anthony Cartmell
| The "Lisp" code I write in ICAD is much more like C/C++ in that we
| construct long relatively-shallow list structures.  Thus adding code is
| mostly inserting into lists, and dangling parens are useful and don't
| occur in long sequences (perhaps three or four closes maximum in a row).

  you have previously given an example like this:

(list a
      (list b c d)
      (list 0
            (list e f g
                  (list h))))

  I didn't understand why you did this, as I would typically have written
  it very differently, and much more compactly:

`(,a (,b ,c ,d) (0 (,e ,f ,g (,h))))

  for what it's worth, I don't think editing this structure is hard, even
  in vi-clones, which do sport the % command to move to the other paren.

  on the other hand, I think a fair summary of the situation is that as you
  grow used to Lisp and the parens lose importance and "disappear", you
  seek tools that help you reduce the importance of the parens, too.

#:Erik