On 6/20/07, William D Clinger <will at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>
> I would agree that redefining [ and ] to do something
> useful is not as popular a pastime as redefining [ and ]
> to do something useless.
>
> To understand that phenomenon would require consideration
> of the human condition.
I assume you are alluding to the use of [ and ] as completely
synonymous with ( and ) as useless. Of course the same logic could
determine that using tabs and newlines as synonymous with space, and
zero or multiple whitespace as synonymous with a single space, are
also useless. We use semantically meaningless syntax all the time to
convey implicit meaning about our programs. I think the programming
community has gotten used to this phenomenon by now.
I hope anyone who discovers something interesting about the human
condition by considering s-expressions will take the time to let the
Scheme community know. It is a fascinating possibility.
--
Carl Eastlund
Received on Wed Jun 20 2007 - 11:11:30 UTC