[Tfug] Language choices

[Chris Niswander]

At 12:24 AM 10/30/2006 -0800, Bexley Hall wrote:
>
>--- t takahashi <gambarimasu at gmail.com> wrote:
>Note that I had previously commented that, were it
>not for parens, LISP would be an ideal choice in
>that regard.  I also commented that parens *seem*
>to be impossible to do away with.


If punctuation is a problem in your user environment, you can pick a language
that *includes only a minimal number of nonalphanumeric characters*,
and for each character that isn't whitespace or alphanumeric,
instead use a pronounceable word (which becomes a new language keyword.)

Some complications would arise if in your original language of choice
a lack of whitespace adjacent to a nonalphanumeric character sometimes
has *necessary* semantic value.

Maybe this makes Lisp good?  
I wonder what other languages have only a small number 
of nonalphanumeric characters.  (At the moment only languages
are coming to mind that have many, such as C++ and Perl. :-) )

I think this would only require a fairly simple preprocessor,
or modest modifications to your tokenizer or parser if you plan
to implement/customize your own interpreter.

Sincerely,
Chris Niswander