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> S-expressions are a subset of text it’s axiomatically impossible for them to be more expressive. This reasoning is backwards. Structure creates expressivenes
by geofft 8y ago
> S-expressions are a subset of text it’s axiomatically impossible for them to be more expressive.
This reasoning is backwards. Structure creates expressiveness. A novel in correct, readable English is more expressive than an arbitrary pile of letters, because it follows a form. A painting, even when represented as a JPEG, is more expressive than a large number, because it is considered as a valid JPEG and a painting. A Bach chorale with no parallel fifths, and a mid-20th-century experimental atonal piece, are both more expressive than banging on a piano.
- theoh 8y agoI think the GP was talking about what you might call "expressive range". Anything that can be expressed in a string of characters of a given length uses at most the full expressive possibilities of that string. I think it's a silly point, because the meaning of lisper's comment was clearly that the added structure makes s-expressions more powerful than the Unix convention of "plain text". The Unix standard of lines within which there are fields delimited by some character is, itself, a very primitively constrained/structured form of text, so it too is less expressive than raw text could be. But this is a daft discussion.