Most of the SQL grammar shown is, in practical terms, semantics more than syntax. Sure, there’s syntax woven into it, so that the points being made are quite va

Most of the SQL grammar shown is, in practical terms, semantics more than syntax. Sure, there’s syntax woven into it, so that the points being made are quite valid, but I mean that to cover the scope of that grammar would take just as much space in Lisp, just in the form of things like function and parameter definitions (probably just as complex) instead of syntax. So it’s not just 118 lines of stuff Lisp wouldn’t need at all, which is a way I can see some people misinterpreting that section. SQL puts a lot of its complexity into syntax-space, a similar Lisp system puts it into library-space, but the complexity is still there (just probably easier to work with programmatically).