On Thursday 11 December 2008 13:50, Paul Barry wrote: > On Dec 11, 4:44 pm, Randall R Schulz <rsch...@sonic.net> wrote: > > All these things are syntactic sugar. Shorthand ways to write > > things that have vanilla S-Expression counterparts. Again, I would > > not call them syntax. > > syntactic sugar is not syntax?
I have to say "no." Syntax is about complex ordering rules. Take a look at the grammar for Java or C or Pascal or Ada or even for YACC or JavaCC! They're horrendously complicated. There's nothing like that in Lisps. Syntactic sugar of the sort present in Lisps is very simple. One or two characters trigger a small modification or adornment of what immediately follows. A more interesting contrast, perhaps, is CLIF, the Common Logic Interchange Format (successor to KIF). If I flashed a page of it in front of you, you'd think it was Lisp. It uses prefix, fully parenthesized notation. But it requires a grammar specified in BNF. So you _can_ have syntax in such notational forms, but Lisp doesn't Randall Schulz --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
