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Sexps are better than strings because they are more structured. It would be even better to represent code with separate data types for every construct instead o
by jules 17y ago
Sexps are better than strings because they are more structured. It would be even better to represent code with separate data types for every construct instead of the relatively unstructured sexps.
- stcredzero 17y agoJust having a special delimiter for code blocks helps tremendously. If you stop there, and don't add more syntax, you're just about at Smalltalk.
- lispm 17y agos-expressions are an external syntax. You can create any data structure you want from them, given the right reader. S-expressions are not INTERNAL to Lisp, only external. Thus s-expressions are defined on characters. Comparing s-expressions to strings makes no sense. The representation of code is a different issue. You could read an s-expression and represent it internally as a string.