A different take on S-expressions

Re:A different take on S-expressions by agumonkey on Wednesday June 18, 2025 @05:14PM (#44313332)

there's a hybrid form (sweet-expressions ? i forgot), top-level terms are parens-free

    eq (mul a a)
       (pow a 2)

    defun min (a b)
      (if (a < b) a b)

IIRC the hack to support this at read time was minimal, and it made a big impact in terms of "mainstream appeal"

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Re:A different take on S-expressions by em-bee on Wednesday June 18, 2025 @08:32PM (#44314420)

the elvish shell uses the syntax in the first example:

    > eq (* 3 3) (math:pow 3 2)
    ▶ $true

(function definitions on the other hand uses smalltalk/ruby style blocks)

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Re:A different take on S-expressions by marcosdumay on Wednesday June 18, 2025 @09:41PM (#44314713)

IMO, make some syntax element that means "each line indented from this one has one single element, unless indented further".

    eq :
        mul a a
        pow a 2

    defun min (a b) :
        if (< a b) a b

That means you can also have haskell-like continuations:

    seq :
        eq (mul a a)
            (pow a 2)
        eq 4 3

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