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Comment by zardeh | Hacker News Reader

So, uhmm,

    def parse(s): return json.loads('['+re.sub('([")])\s*(["(])','\g<1>,\g<2>',re.sub('[^()\s]+','"\g<0>"',s)).replace('(','[').replace(')',']')+']')

works for python, I'm assuming javascript has something equally small

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Yes, uninteresting, as I said. Lisp syntax is quite simple, so I would not expect it to be very difficult to make a regex to parse it. Btw, does that handle quoted strings, strings with syntax characters in them, and strings with escapes?

And dotted pairs ? I had a super cute sexp parser in PHP, until I started handling sexp fully.

Would dotted pair notation make sense for this lisp where lists are arrays, not linked cons cells?

IMHO, yes, binary building blocks matter a lot in lisp philosophy, whether or not they're built on javascript arrays.

Thanks for responding, man. That's my point though. There is no cons building block in this lisp. I don't think (1 2 . 3) can be represented in it so having the notation for it makes no sense.

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