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> Well, and more syntax than S-expressions: it's got both objects and arrays as fundamental structures instead of just lists Well, Common Lisp has both of thos

by zeveb 9y ago

> Well, and more syntax than S-expressions: it's got both objects and arrays as fundamental structures instead of just lists Well, Common Lisp has both of those as fundamental atoms: #S(foo :bar 3) #(1 2 3) The former creates an instance of a FOO struct with its BAR slot set to 3; the latter is a 3-item array.

nanny 9y ago
And then CLOS objects, hash tables, regular expressions, etc. can be added with reader macros.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  It's cool and I love it, but it's irrelevant in the context of a universal data exchange language. In such case, you'd want to have those primitives defined in the exchange language spec itself - even if you'd end up implementing them as reader macros in CL (which I don't recommend - reader macros turn your READs into EVALs, which you obviously shouldn't do on untrusted input).
  - zeveb 9y ago
    > you'd want to have those primitives defined in the exchange language spec itself I agree with this: certain things need to be in the spec. > even if you'd end up implementing them as reader macros in CL (which I don't recommend - reader macros turn your READs into EVALs, which you obviously shouldn't do on untrusted input). This I don't agree with, because technically #\( & #\" are reader macros … they're just very well-defined reader macros. Presumably a spec which defined hash tables, regular expressions or whatever would define them as well as the Lisp spec defines lists and strings (and if not, well — it's a bad spec!).
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      > I agree with this: certain things need to be in the spec. That was my main point. In the second part of the comment I didn't mean to discourage use of reader macros - it was more of an aside that the general facility of CL-style reader macros literally makes READ "shell out" into EVAL, so you need to (diligently) disable it for untrusted input (or reimplement a limited READ by hand). So we can't say "oh, but S-exps in Common Lisp can have anything through reader macros". Presumably if hash table literals were specified as a part of basic syntax, we could depend on it being standard and part of the safe subset of READ's duties; as it is however, we can't depend on it for arbitrary inputs.

by zeveb 9y ago

nanny 9y ago

And then CLOS objects, hash tables, regular expressions, etc. can be added with reader macros.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
It's cool and I love it, but it's irrelevant in the context of a universal data exchange language. In such case, you'd want to have those primitives defined in the exchange language spec itself - even if you'd end up implementing them as reader macros in CL (which I don't recommend - reader macros turn your READs into EVALs, which you obviously shouldn't do on untrusted input).
- zeveb 9y ago
  > you'd want to have those primitives defined in the exchange language spec itself I agree with this: certain things need to be in the spec. > even if you'd end up implementing them as reader macros in CL (which I don't recommend - reader macros turn your READs into EVALs, which you obviously shouldn't do on untrusted input). This I don't agree with, because technically #\( & #\" are reader macros … they're just very well-defined reader macros. Presumably a spec which defined hash tables, regular expressions or whatever would define them as well as the Lisp spec defines lists and strings (and if not, well — it's a bad spec!).
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > I agree with this: certain things need to be in the spec. That was my main point. In the second part of the comment I didn't mean to discourage use of reader macros - it was more of an aside that the general facility of CL-style reader macros literally makes READ "shell out" into EVAL, so you need to (diligently) disable it for untrusted input (or reimplement a limited READ by hand). So we can't say "oh, but S-exps in Common Lisp can have anything through reader macros". Presumably if hash table literals were specified as a part of basic syntax, we could depend on it being standard and part of the safe subset of READ's duties; as it is however, we can't depend on it for arbitrary inputs.