I said: >There's one annoying aspect of I-expressions: > There is no standard representation for the sole symbol "group"
Egil Möller: > It might not be very clear in the spec and sample implementation, but if >I understand your problem correctly, the answer is that group escapes >group... Hmm, that DOES seem to work! That's a reasonable answer - it just wasn't obvious to me from reading the spec. I probably wasn't clear in my problem. I want to have a language that is able to express 100% of all s-expressions, no exceptions. Otherwise, it's not fully general. And I need to be able convince OTHERS that the language is 100% general, too. In particular, we need to be able to represent the atom "group", as well as having "group" in any place in an s-expression... and be able to easily understand how to do it. It looks like just placing "group" as an item, with no parameters or children, handles the first case. So the I-expression: group maps to the atom: => group That wasn't clear to me, but I guess that DOES follow from the spec. Hmm, a "helpful hint" might be a good idea. With that new understanding, I tried to see if I could make lists with "group" in arbitrary positions, and it looks like the answer is "yes". The one-element-list case is easy: group group => (group) Two-element is easy, too: group group 1 => (group 1) group 1 group => (1 group) Three-element, multi-line or one-line: group group 1 2 => (group 1 2) group group 1 2 => (group 1 2) + group 1 => (+ group 1) + group 1 => (+ group 1) + 1 group => (+ 1 group) + 1 group => (+ 1 group) And the >3 element follows from the 3-element case. Okay, I'm convinced. That works! --- David A. Wheeler ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Readable-discuss mailing list Readable-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/readable-discuss
