Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Tla spork

[Andrew Suffield]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 12:32:10AM -0500, Matthew Dempsky wrote:
> Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > I really would like to understand, what's the big difference between writing
> > things as
> >
> >         if (a) { b } else { c }
> > or as
> >         (if a b c)
> >
> > I mean, yes, there are differences in terms of legibility, but if you ignore
> > such details, it's really all the same.
> 
> If you think one's more readable than the other, why can't you use:
> 
>     (if a then b else c)

Let that become:

       if a then b else c

And let parentheses be used anywhere purely as precedence. It should
now be obvious just how meaningless it is to say "s-exps" - either
nobody uses them (because they're nothing but a requirement for extra
punctuation, which everybody promptly bypasses), or nobody writes
languages that don't use them (because they're just anything that can
be described by BNF), depending on precisely how you define "s-exp".

[If you now introduce {} as a list constructor, using ; as a
delimiter, then you've got the syntax of C and Java; if you use [] and ,
instead then you've got Haskell and Perl].

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
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