Re: newbie: m-expressions

falcon wrote: 
Although I don't appreciate the syntax completely, I'm starting to see
the elegance.  I think I'm well on my way to being convinced of Lisp's
greatness, but the application for which I started looking at LISP will
require average technical people to interact with it.  Think of a
database with stored procedure language.  I can build my database
management system in a language of my own choice (let's say lisp) but
when I provide a language for the end-user, it needs to be like
C/C++/Java/etc. (just an example).

Now I can parse my language and translate it to Lisp...but if there is
a well thought-out standard way of doing it (I hoped M-Expressions were
it) then it makes it easier for me.

Just make your programming language XML-based. Then you get the power of S-expressions with the marketability of XML. The same people who hate reading (or (> x y) (func?)) will be fine with the XML equivalent:

<or>
  <greater-than>x y</greater-than>
  <func />
</or>

  -- MJF
.

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