Recently, I found freedom of coding playing with Clojure with over 20 years’ experience on other program languages, Previously, I had several trials of learning Lisp, but never got traction.
However there are two syntax notations always bother me, it feels unnatural with my experience on other programming languages and math: 1) Prefix operator for math formula. Jeffrey Bester’s math library https://github.com/jbester/cljext/blob/master/cljext/math.clj has brought in the infix notation and solved the problem; 2) The leading item of a list follows the parenthesis when it serves as a function name, (f x) instead of f(x). I am fully aware of many discussions on alternative syntax for Clojure and Lisp in the past, one stream is here http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/319a1c77ed718ba/3e4be7484b7cbe38 My proposition is enhance Clojure to accept both (f x) and f(x), the leading item can appear either after ‘(‘ as usual with classic Lisp notion: (println "Hello," "world!") or with conventional function call notation: println("Hello," "world!") The f(x) notation is just a syntax sugar, the only restriction is no space between the leading item and '('. If one or more spaces in between, the item will be treated as a separate symbol. Either notion or a mix of them can be used in the same program. Here are some examples: ; classic Lisp syntax notation (defn pig-latin [word] (let [first-letter (first word)] (if (.contains "aeiou" (str first-letter)) (str word "ay") (str (subs word 1) first-letter "ay")))) (println (pig-latin "red")) (println (pig-latin "orange")) ; f(x) syntax notation defn(pig-latin [word] let( [first-letter first(word)] if(.contains("aeiou", str(first-letter)) str(word, "ay") str(subs(word, 1), first-letter, "ay")))) println(pig-latin("red")) println(pig-latin("orange")) ; classic Lisp syntax notation (defn fib [n] (if (< n 2) 1 (+ (fib (dec n) ) (fib (- n 2))))) (fib 36) ; mix of two notations defn(fib [n] if((< n 2) 1 (+ fib(dec(n)) fib((- n 2))) ) ) fib(36) I have made minor changes (dozen lines) in one file (LispReader.java) from Clojure source repository to implement this syntax sugar(code posted at https://github.com/louisyulu/clojure-fx). It works with well- formed classic Clojure code and the proposed notation. Running the test suite from Clojure distribution results two error: One in the file compilation.clj line 90: (recur y ^Long(rem x y)))))] The problem is ^Long(… becomes function call, the fix is adding a space in between (recur y ^Long (rem x y)))))] The second is in the file sequences.clj line 1131: (is (=(partition-by #{\a \e \i \o \u} "abcdefghijklm") The problem is (=(… , ‘=’ is associated with following ‘(‘, the intention was the previous ‘(‘, the fix is also adding a space in between (is (= (partition-by #{\a \e \i \o \u} "abcdefghijklm") These two cases are caused by the not well-formed Clojure code (strictly speaking, each item in the list should be separated by a space). The proposed syntax sugar apparently pleases my eyes and fingers from conventional languages. With some experiments, I found the code is more readable for me to use f(x) notation for function call, and (op x) for operator. I like to hear from the community what kind of dark corner the proposed syntax sugar may run into. Thanks, Louis -- 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 Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. 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
