??>> knowing this facts, it should be pretty easy to read Lisp source code
??>> -- you shouldn't think that =?/! characters have any special meaning.
??>> just same symbol names mean same symbols, different ones mean
??>> different -- and that's all. it could be using some graphical glyphs
??>> or whatever -- it won't become more complex or less readable with it.
PFh> Oh yes it does.
it depends, for functions like (lambda (x) (* x x)) variable name X actually
has no meaning, it could be colored dot as well.
i find it elegant that in language like FORTH i could write "DUP *" without
naming what shouldn't be named, but if we _have_ to give some name to
variables in such situations, meaningless graphical symbol would be better
than some x or y IMO.
PFh> First, those symbols have meaning to humans - we are, or at least I
PFh> am, used to pausing for a fraction of a second when we/I read
PFh> sentence-ending punctuation like ? and ! - makes reading code
PFh> containing those characters in the middle of a "sentence" feel weird.
for me it looks somewhat "funny", but that's not really that annoying..
code in any programming language might look somewhat hard to read for those
who haven't get used to it, because actually "professional" programming
language should be optimized for "professionals", but not for "passers-by".
i think people who read Scheme code each day or so not only find "?" and "!"
quite normal, but those characters in symbol names even make code easier to
read, as they are concise and expressive.
or do you say you've got used to Scheme notation, but it's still weird to
you??
PF> Also, since they're not pronounced, and I remember things more or less
PF> phonetically rather than graphically, if I read code containing a
PF> combination of symbols like x and x! and x?, I'm unlikely to
PF> distinguish between them without extra effort.
most people prefer working with graphical infromation, according to
psychologist..
however having all three symbols in one function would be a bad style, ! and
? are more of hint IMO.
PF> (At least in Scheme they generally do have meaning to inform my memory;
PF> nevertheless, Scheme is harder to read, for me, than Lisp)
me too, and probably it's not coicidence if we are in comp.lang.lisp rather
than in comp.lang.scheme :)
??>> please note that language standard doesn't globally define any freaky
??>> names you need to remember (which is the case with Perl). these
??>> symbols are used
PFh> set!, etc., are freaky names which are in the standard.
"set!" is not freaky enough -- it should be quite obvious that it's some
"imperative" order, and for those who know that there are different sorts of
commands it's pretty intuitive that "!" denotes imperative ones.
the other rule is that predicates have "?" in the end -- although pretty
intuitive.
that's quite different for Perl's $| $' and whole load of other punctuations
without any sense.