Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme

[Thomas F. Burdick]

hs at heaven.nirvananet (Hartmann Schaffer) writes:

> In article <xcvpth8rcfh.fsf at famine.ocf.berkeley.edu>,
> 	tfb at famine.OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Thomas F. Burdick) writes:
> > Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk <qrczak at knm.org.pl> writes:
> > 
> >> I find the Lisp syntax hardly readable when everything looks alike,
> >> mostly words and parentheses, and when every level of nesting requires
> >> parens. I understand that it's easier to work with by macros, but it's
> >> harder to work with by humans like I.
> > 
> > You find delimited words more difficult than symbols?  For literate
> > people who use alphabet-based languages, I find this highly suspect.
> > Maybe readers of only ideogram languages might have different
> > preferences, but we are writing in English here...
> 
> well, there are a few occasions where symbols are preferrable.  just
> imagine mathematics with words only

Oh, certainly.  Unlike most languages, Lisp lets you use symbols for
your own names (which is easily abused, but not very often).  A bad
example:

  ;; Lets you swear in your source code, cartoonishly
  (define-symbol-macro $%^&!
    (error "Aw, $%^&!  Something went wrong..."))

  ;; An example use
  (defun foo (...)
    (cond
      ...
      (t $%^&!)))

And, although you generally use symbols from the KEYWORD package for
keyword arguments, you don't have to, and they don't have to be words:

  (defgeneric convert-object (object new-type)
    (:documentation "Like an extensible COERCE."))

  (defun convert (object &key ((-> to)))
    "Sugary"
    (convert-object object to))

  (defconstant -> '-> "More sugar")

  ;; Example usage
  (convert *thing* -> (class-of *other-thing*))

Of course, these are lame examples, but they show that Lisp *can*
incorporate little ascii-picture-symbols.  Good examples would
necessarily be very domain-dependant.

-- 
           /|_     .-----------------------.                        
         ,'  .\  / | No to Imperialist war |                        
     ,--'    _,'   | Wage class war!       |                        
    /       /      `-----------------------'                        
   (   -.  |                               
   |     ) |                               
  (`-.  '--.)                              
   `. )----'