Subject: Re: RFC: Lisp/Scheme with less parentheses through Python-like  significant indentation?
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: 2000/08/10
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3174940090055205@naggum.net>

* David Bakhash <cadet@alum.mit.edu>
| Do you have code that parses this (minus any dot notation, which I
| also don't care too much for)?

  The implicit "to share" has been noted.  Most of my recent Lisp code
  is under "trade secret" wraps as it's work for hire these days, so
  I'm not as free to share as I once was.

| infix.lisp has some of the stuff I think one would need to implement
| this, but I don't think it's complete, and (sin x) is, as far as I
| know, expected to be sin(x) with  infix.lisp.  What you seem to have
| above is a bit hybrid.

  Well, fully parenthesized prefix syntax is a lot easier to deal with
  than the sort of hybrid prefix notation you find in infix, so
  instead of inventing a language to describe hybrid prefix in infix,
  I decided to use infix where it clearly worked well, and real prefix
  where infix doesn't work at all, such as in function calls.  Parens
  retain their Lispness, while the mathematical parens are expressed
  using brackets.

  E.g., (foo (+ a b) (* c d)) becomes $ (foo [a + b] [c * d]) $.

  Perhaps needless to say, this stuff has grown without prior design
  to guide it and with much backward compatibility to hamper any
  design, so given enough time, it would probably grow into C++.

#:Erik
-- 
  If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.