I said about "a!b" syntax:
> > This is kind of interesting, but it can already be noted as (a 'b) or
> > a('b), and it's not clear to me that this abbreviation is worth it for
> > arbitrary Lisp-based systems.
Alan Manuel Gloria replied:
> Ah. This is a common idiom in Arc. In Arc, tables can be applied,
> and applying a table to a single argument is equivalent to looking up
> the key in the table. Thus, when doing objects in Arc, you use a
> table, set up keys, and us a!b syntax. Something like:
>
> let
> \ obj
> \ \ table
> 'key1 \ val1
> 'key2 \ fn (x) {x + 42}
> obj!key2 obj!key1
>
> Thus, at least in Arc, a!b syntax is considered useful.
...
> a.b stems out of a!b syntax
No doubt various Lisps will create abbreviations that are especially helpful
for *their* semantics, and that is a *good* thing. We certainly don't want to
be interfering with that, if we can help it; we want to let languages have
abbreviations that make their use pleasant.
But I'm hoping to create a *common* notation that can be widely adopted, at
least in principle, and then extended by various languages.
So if an abbreviation is nearly-universally useful, I think it should be
considered for our common work. Otherwise, we should try to make it possible
for people to use additional language-specific notations in their language of
choice. In particular, the sweet-filter should try to pass along symbols so
that a language's native reader will correctly interpret most abbreviations.
That said, certain Lisps are especially popular (e.g., Scheme, Common Lisp,
Clojure, Arc). We should strive to fit in cleanly with them where possible.
If we can't get them to build it into the language itself (a hard road), at
least create mechanisms so developers can use them as easily as we can make it
happen (E.G., perhaps an SRFI or similar for Scheme, perhaps ASDF for Common
Lisp, etc.). Some stuff like curly-infix is especially easy to adopt; we may
be able to get our noses into the tents in some places :-).
--- David A. Wheeler
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