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From: anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Lisp syntax, was A simpler way to tokenize and parse?
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2023 13:14:31 GMT
Organization: Institut fuer Computersprachen, Technische Universitaet Wien
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>[[...] The original plan was that Lisp 2
>would have M expressions that looked more like a normal language but
>it's over 50 years later and they still haven't gotten around to it.
>-John]

Actually they have.  Some HOPL paper (or several of them) discuss
this: There were several attempts at an Algol-like syntax, but Lisp
proprammers found that they preferred programming in S-Expressions
over the Algol-like syntax, whether it's M-Expressions, Dylan syntax,
or several other attempts.

The only language which might be considered a success at having an
Algol-like syntax in something similar to Lisp is JavaScript.  Maybe
this is just because JavaScript is far enough from Lisp not just in
syntax, and there is no S-expression syntax for JavaScript, is there?

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/