[racket-dev] P4P: A Syntax Proposal

> I believe the idea was not to convert people who like s-exprs but rather
> to attract all those other programmers (including beginners) who don't
> like them.   (It might also help convince older CS dept people to allow
> changing the intro CS course to H2DP using a non-parenthesis syntax.)

Precisely!  Couldn't have put it better -- thanks.

> I don't understand why not write a lexer, since replacing "do: ()" with
> "{}" is the most natural and readable thing to do.

I really don't want to touch the lexer level.

Until this morning, I didn't know how to check for { ... }, which is
why I had the do: keyword.  It appears that I can get rid of it.  I
have to decide now whether I want to.  I'll think about that.

>  It also would allow
> "when:" to expect one argument by default since "when: {}" is easy to
> write.

That would be fine.  I'll think about that, too.

> Infix notation can be achieved unambiguously if you use LL(1) with
> backtracking

...which I didn't want to do.

Pedagogically, it has been immensely valuable to explain to kids that
+ and - aren't some special thing, but are just mere operators -- and
so are string-append and image-overlay and so on.

Plus, there isn't much arithmetic in many Scheme programs, which means
the quantity of actual infix is small.

> Did the proposal address how quoting/unquoting could be done on P4P
> syntax (for macros, etc.), or how to make a list?   I suppose "list(a, b,
> c)" would work, but do we not have "'(a, b, c)" or something too?

I had some trouble getting quote to work.  It seems like it should not
be a problem.  But it's on my list.  I haven't thought about
unquoting, though it should be possible in principle.  (It's always
been on the todo list at the top of the implementation file.)

Shriram