News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ren: a lightweight data-exchange text format by rgchris on Friday October 20, 2017 @01:25PM (#15517523)
Note that Ren-C (a fork of Rebol that is only tangentially related to Ren) uses `blank` or literal `_`.

The language concept is a bit more fundamental than config files. Rebol (and Ren-C and cousin Red) is a fully homoiconic language that itself has tools for parsing and interpreting DSLs ('Dialects' to use the language's nomenclature) that use the same language rules. In essence you do indeed get the lexer for free.

Would recommend a wee read of: http://blog.hostilefork.com/why-rebol-red-parse-cool/

I've argued that Ren is somewhat redundant as it fills the same space that Rebol does though Rebol lacks a formal specification at this time.

Re:Ren: a lightweight data-exchange text format by greggirwin on Friday October 20, 2017 @02:37PM (#15518136)
Which Rebol fills this space, R2 or R3? The idea was also not loadable Redbol compatibility (which would be nice of course), but general utility. So Ren adds new types and changes others, where it thinks that is best.