Comment by teaspoon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by teaspoon | Hacker News Reader

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Your mention of Python made me wonder if anyone's experimented with an indentation-sensitive syntax for Lisp. It turns out they have.

In this Scheme RFI, "I-expressions" can be freely mixed with S-expressions in source:

http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-49/srfi-49.html

This argument for I-expressions touches on many of the same points as the OP; e.g., whether source needs to be readable independently of the editor:

http://www.dwheeler.com/readable/retort-lisp-can-be-readable...

If you watch a Lisp-related mailing list, it seems like once a week someone brings up the topic "hey, what if I replaced the parens with significant whitespace?"

The answer:

You end up with seemingly arbitrary limitations like single line lambdas, just like Python.

False. The I-expression:

  lambda (x y)
    display x
    + x y

corresponds to the S-expression:

  (lambda (x y)
    (display x)
    (+ x y))

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