Hi, I have more than 30 years of dev under my belt dated back to Fortran, Cobol,... never had a problem with Lisp syntax....
Far more bothering to me were immutability and laziness, it took me three months to get used to it, not in a home project but laying out production code. Clojure is a Lisp and prefix notation is part of it. It brings uniformity to the syntax, on the contrary, your alternate syntax breaks it. You forget to consider a Lisp form as data structures into which your code can crawl and alter it to generate different forms. The prefix notation and the list shape of forms allows that to be done easily. Even if it was done, I see a huge usability problem with your approach because code generation in macros and elsewhere would be impacted badly or at least the two syntax would have problems coexisting in the same code base. Look at forms as data structures and it should ease the transition. Luc P. > 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 > -- Softaddicts<lprefonta...@softaddicts.ca> sent by ibisMail! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. 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