3 ms·
I'm no lisper but it seems to me that the implicit quote and the resulting need to use square brackets to delineate lists would make it more difficult to write
by Goladus 20y ago
I'm no lisper but it seems to me that the implicit quote and the resulting need to use square brackets to delineate lists would make it more difficult to write macros.
- omouse 20y agoIt depends on how he's defined the implicit quote syntax. You could make it so it doesn't have any effect in a def-macro call or something but that increases complexity just a tiny bit for a feature that doesn't do much for the developer. Off-topic-ish: The square brackets are kind of neat but not for that purpose. If instead he allowed the interchange of square brackets and parenthesis, i.e. (+ 2 [ 3 2]), that would be neat and useful...it would allow someone to differentiate between nested lists slightly. And of course, it's easier to click [ instead of Shift+[ to get ( :p
- shiro 20y agoI suspect the need of special syntax for list construction came from the introduction of currying. If you want currying you need to know arity of procedures, so you lose variable arity procedures such as 'list'.