Re: The beauty of LATEX

on Sat Oct 22 2011, Joel de Guzman <joel-AT-boost-consulting.com> wrote:

> On 10/22/2011 5:08 PM, Daniel James wrote:
>> On 22 October 2011 02:48, Joel de Guzman <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> On 10/21/2011 6:14 PM, Daniel James wrote:
>>>> I think your third list is incorrect.
>
> [snip]
>
>> is a single element list with 2 elements, but it says it's a 2 element list.
>
> Jeepers! Describing such a simple thing in english makes me dizzy! :-)
>
> [snip]
>
>> I think you'll need to add another built-in function for calling
>> function arguments, such as:
>> 
>> [def foo a][[`call [`a]]]
>> 
>> Otherwise consider:
>> 
>> [def foo a][[`a]]
>> [def bar][x]
>> [foo [bar]]
>> 
>> Does invoking [`a] return a list of one item, or the text 'x'?
>
> Let me re-code that using the latest syntax tweak
> (http://pastebin.com/rvQfCVKh),
>
> [def foo a][[a]]

Especially if you're inspired by S-expressions, I can't imagine any good
excuse to invent a new syntax when lisp already has a syntax for this
sort of thing.  If we need to use square brackets instead of round ones
for legacy (or other) reasons, that's fine, but I don't at all see why
it makes sense to choose a syntax where of all things there's no outer
set of parens around the entire
function/macro/template/whatever-you-call-this-thing.  Why not do this:

  [def foo[a] [a]]

?

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com