Re: Lisp Reader & Tools

Oh wow! Very cool! Thanks for the tips, Martin. I accidentally discovered those two characters for just the purpose originally intended. What a lucky random dart!

My main puzzlement arises from the use of Terminating vs Non-Terminating macro chars. I have always built lexical analyzers based on prefix chars, not termination chars. I see that the Lisp way works. But it also implies that code that looks cramped like this would pass muster:

(let((c #\:))(find c"my string has colons :::":from-end t))

It does, and I suppose it’s okay, but it violates common sense style.

BTW… I have never used Perl. Is that de rigueur among programmers of today? (I’m not a programmer). I have used SED and AWK about 40-50 years ago. But Lisp can do everything we need. Why go outside the nice environment into Bash land?

> On May 28, 2026, at 08:33, Martin Simmons <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> They didn't actually escape notice.  #\U+2032 and #\U+2033 are unicode "prime"
> characters, so software doesn't typically use them as quotes.  According to
> the authors of Wikipedia, these primes are the correct characters to use for
> arcminutes and arcseconds, so using them is good.
> 
> We have reader macros for #\U+2018 (as a backquote), #\U+2019 (as a quote) and
> #\U+201C (as a double-quote, paired with #\U+201D) because some software auto
> converts the ascii backquote, quote and double-quote into them, so it is
> convenient to recognize them for cut and paste.  Ironically, it looks your
> email client did this auto conversion in your keyboard sequences below!
> 
> -- 
> Martin Simmons
> LispWorks Ltd
> http://www.lispworks.com/
> 
> 
> 
>>>>>> On Wed, 27 May 2026 15:29:47 -0700, David McClain (as dbm at refined-audiometrics dot com) said:
>> 
>> Found it!!
>> 
>> #\U+2032  (′) and #U+2033 (″).  These two seem to have escaped notice by LW. And so they can be used in symbol names and anywhere else you like, without confusing the Listener and Editor.
>> 
>> I have them assigned to keyboard sequences ^z-‘  and ^z-“ for easy access. My ^z- chords also map all the Greek alphabet.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On May 27, 2026, at 14:31, David McClain <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> And also, many times, I just want to copy/paste from a printout from some other source and have Lisp interpret what is shown. Hence the desire to have embedded quote and double quote in the angle input. To use #N/xx…/ means I have to pre-edit the printout before submitting to Lisp.
>>> 
>>> But… if we had an extensible Lexical Analyzer that could be tailored to the needs….
>>> 
>>> What Common Lisp presents is cutting edge for 1980’s and earlier. But not so much for today.
>>> 
>>>> On May 27, 2026, at 14:21, David McClain (as dbm at refined-audiometrics dot com) <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> …and also because the Editor and Listener balks when your delimited run of chars contains an isolated or odd number of |, “, or an embedded \ that isn’t being used as an escape.  This speaks to the need for those bizarre comments that have to be inserted at strategic locations to get the listener and editor to allow you to execute or compile a sexpr.
>>>> 
>>>> And I’m hardly a purist CompSci person. I am someone that just wants keyboard convenience.
>>>> 
>>>>> On May 27, 2026, at 13:29, Tim Bradshaw (as tfb at cley dot com) <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 27 May 2026, at 20:57, David McClain <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>> That seems a purist Computer Scientist’s argument.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I just can't understand why, for instance, #D/xxyyzz/ is not OK, where 'xxyyzz' is some sequence containing the syntax you are interested in and '/' is any character.  I mean, only a purist computer scientist would object to the delimiters, surely?
>>>>> 
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