Re: s-expression data language

Antonio Menezes Leitao wrote:
"Rob Thorpe" <robert.thorpe@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

The problems of XML have been quite often discussed here. People have
often mentioned how lisp read syntax performs the same job much more
simply.

But lisp read syntax in its normal state has some problems. Different
lisp implementations read it in slightly different ways, for example.
Also there is no way to describe a "valid" piece of data, except by a
lisp program that checks it.

These things would not be impossible to solve. Has anyone actually
done this and written a list based system similar in aims to XML?

Take a look at http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/sexp.html

and also

http://www.umu.se/it/projupp/spocp/doc/intro.html

Thankyou, that was what I was looking for.

Maybe it would be useful to modernise this a bit (adding Unicode
support for example, like in SCOCP) and create a new version.

I might have a go if I get a little time in the next few months.

.

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