In theory, I'll agree with you. However, as far as I know, there are no s-exp parsing libraries for any language I know but Lisp. Also s-exps as they exist in Lisp assume some Lispish concepts that don't map to all languages. Symbols, for example, don't exist in Java. JSON is a better solution for cross language portability.

(sorry I want to reply to the reply but there's no reply button for it)

Saying there are no s-expression parsers for non-Lisp is ridiculous.

This one's http://sexpr.sourceforge.net/ for C, it's been in sourceforge since 2002.

perhaps you prefer one in :

Javascript - http://planet.plt-scheme.org/package-source/dherman/javascri...

Perl - http://search.cpan.org/~nelhage/Data-SExpression-0.34/lib/Da...

Limbo - http://man.cat-v.org/inferno/6/sexprs

I shan't go on

I didn't say that there weren't s-expression parsers for languages other than Lisp; just that I haven't found them. I'll be the first to admit that I haven't really been looking.

But you'll note the disparity in support. A library for parsing XML with C may have existed since 2002, but it's existed for XML since 97. In Java, XML support has been baked into the JVM for a while, but S-exp parsers are hard to find. That library you list for Javascript is not a s-exp parser but rather a Scheme library for generating Javascript from a Scheme-like language. Googling for javascript and s-exps returns a lot of results like that but not many s-expression parsers. There certainly aren't any widely used and recognized libraries like there are for XML and JSON fro most languages aside from Lisp.