4 ms·

This post shows exactly what I mean: editing Lisp with a good editor is nice, however when you're bootstrapping a system sometimes the only tool available is vi

by m45t3r 8y ago

This post shows exactly what I mean: editing Lisp with a good editor is nice, however when you're bootstrapping a system sometimes the only tool available is vi (no even vim, just vi). Try to find a close parenthesis after 8 function calls without syntax highlighting, or without your "hide parenthesis". Nix syntax is quite simple to read even without any editor support. I did the whole bootstrapping of my current NixOS system only using vim without special support for Nix language and still got it right in my first try.

kazinator 8y ago
Vi has % to jump to a matching parenthesis as pretty ancient feature. It's in POSIX: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/vi.html#tag_20_152_13_21 http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/vi... Of course % is a movement that combines with commands like deletion: d%. The original vi also has a Lisp mode (not described in POSIX) for indentation; that is of course in Vim also. All the code you see here was written using little more than indentation via Lisp mode and % for paren matching: http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/txr/tree/share/txr/stdlib http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/txr/tree/share/txr/stdlib Though I work with syntax coloring and sometimes use Vim features like visual selection.
- m45t3r 8y ago
  > Vi has % to jump to a matching parenthesis as pretty ancient feature. I know. It helps, but it is far from being good enough. Making things like slurp is still a pain without proper editor support, and this is very common to do in Lisp. > All the code you see here was written using little more than indentation via Lisp mode and % for paren matching: Yeah, and K&R written Unix with only ed. My point still is valid: Nix is more readable than Lisp without proper editor support.
  - kazinator 8y ago
    Also, any half decent Lisp dialect can tell you where an unbalanced parenthesis lies; you shouldn't have any difficulties hunting for this in a large file. $ txr unbal.tl unbal.tl:8: syntax error unbal.tl:8: unterminated expression unbal.tl:8: while parsing form starting at line 5 $ pr -Tn unbal.tl 1 (defun foo() 2 3 ) 4 5 (defun bar() 6 (let (x) 7 )
    - m45t3r 8y ago
      I don't think this is a great error message. I use Clojure everyday and I still had to look 2 times to find the error. If it was something like this, this would be much better: Unmatched parenthesis from starting at line 5. Maybe you wanted to do something like this? 1 (defun foo() 2 3 ) 4 5 (defun bar() 6 (let (x) 7 ) ^ This being a very basic code. In reality you will have multiple function calls inside more complicated functions (like a package definition in Guix), so you will end closing 10+ parenthesis and catching them can be hell.
chriswarbo 8y ago
> This post shows exactly what I mean: editing Lisp with a good editor is nice, however when you're bootstrapping a system sometimes the only tool available is vi (no even vim, just vi). Then I think you misunderstood. My point is that if you don't like parentheses, then don't use parentheses. Lisp doesn't care. Denote structure in whichever way you prefer, and convert that to/from s-expressions programatically. Guix runs on Guile Scheme. I-expressions (which use indentation instead of parentheses, which I linked to in the post, https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-49/srfi-49.html https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-49/srfi-49.html ) contains an implementaion for Guile right there in the spec. Likewise the code repos for Sweet expressions and Wisp (which also allow mixfix, braces, etc. and I also linked to in the post) seem to provide explicit Guile support too, alongside other systems (e.g. Racket) and standalone conversion scripts for compatability with any other s-expression system. Guile also has a built-in implementation of "curly-infix expressions" ( https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/guile.html#SRFI_002d105 https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/guile.html#SRFI_00... ). That's 4 ways to use Guix without reading or writing any parentheses; one of which comes built-in. It's also pretty trivial (thanks to the simplicity of s-expressions) to make up your own alternative if you don't like any of these.

by m45t3r 8y ago

kazinator 8y ago

Vi has % to jump to a matching parenthesis as pretty ancient feature. It's in POSIX: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/vi.html#tag_20_152_13_21 http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/vi... Of course % is a movement that combines with commands like deletion: d%. The original vi also has a Lisp mode (not described in POSIX) for indentation; that is of course in Vim also. All the code you see here was written using little more than indentation via Lisp mode and % for paren matching: http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/txr/tree/share/txr/stdlib http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/txr/tree/share/txr/stdlib Though I work with syntax coloring and sometimes use Vim features like visual selection.

m45t3r 8y ago
> Vi has % to jump to a matching parenthesis as pretty ancient feature. I know. It helps, but it is far from being good enough. Making things like slurp is still a pain without proper editor support, and this is very common to do in Lisp. > All the code you see here was written using little more than indentation via Lisp mode and % for paren matching: Yeah, and K&R written Unix with only ed. My point still is valid: Nix is more readable than Lisp without proper editor support.
- kazinator 8y ago
  Also, any half decent Lisp dialect can tell you where an unbalanced parenthesis lies; you shouldn't have any difficulties hunting for this in a large file. $ txr unbal.tl unbal.tl:8: syntax error unbal.tl:8: unterminated expression unbal.tl:8: while parsing form starting at line 5 $ pr -Tn unbal.tl 1 (defun foo() 2 3 ) 4 5 (defun bar() 6 (let (x) 7 )
  - m45t3r 8y ago
    I don't think this is a great error message. I use Clojure everyday and I still had to look 2 times to find the error. If it was something like this, this would be much better: Unmatched parenthesis from starting at line 5. Maybe you wanted to do something like this? 1 (defun foo() 2 3 ) 4 5 (defun bar() 6 (let (x) 7 ) ^ This being a very basic code. In reality you will have multiple function calls inside more complicated functions (like a package definition in Guix), so you will end closing 10+ parenthesis and catching them can be hell.

chriswarbo 8y ago

> This post shows exactly what I mean: editing Lisp with a good editor is nice, however when you're bootstrapping a system sometimes the only tool available is vi (no even vim, just vi). Then I think you misunderstood. My point is that if you don't like parentheses, then don't use parentheses. Lisp doesn't care. Denote structure in whichever way you prefer, and convert that to/from s-expressions programatically. Guix runs on Guile Scheme. I-expressions (which use indentation instead of parentheses, which I linked to in the post, https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-49/srfi-49.html https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-49/srfi-49.html ) contains an implementaion for Guile right there in the spec. Likewise the code repos for Sweet expressions and Wisp (which also allow mixfix, braces, etc. and I also linked to in the post) seem to provide explicit Guile support too, alongside other systems (e.g. Racket) and standalone conversion scripts for compatability with any other s-expression system. Guile also has a built-in implementation of "curly-infix expressions" ( https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/guile.html#SRFI_002d105 https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/guile.html#SRFI_00... ). That's 4 ways to use Guix without reading or writing any parentheses; one of which comes built-in. It's also pretty trivial (thanks to the simplicity of s-expressions) to make up your own alternative if you don't like any of these.