which language has syntax that visually represent a tree? [was X#]

X

Xah Lee

syntax that represent a tree purely [was X#]


Today, i was nosing about some blogs, which made me come to:
http://blog.fogus.me/2009/02/06/yegge-clojure-arc-and-lolita-or-days-of-future-past

in which he wrote: «Now I’m not a LISP expert, but it seems to me that
the S-Expression is generally regarded as the canonical representation
of the LISP AST (and many other languages for that matter). That is,
the LISP syntax is as close to an AST as one can get. Perhaps the
presence of macros, #, `, ‘, and , muddy the waters a bit, but not
much.»

that is technically not true. Although you mentioned lisp syntax
irregularities like “# , ,@ 'â€, but in general this sentiment that
lisp has regular syntax, or that its syntax is closest to abstract
syntax tree, is perpetuating a myth.

Mathematica language's syntax, XML, and XML derived general purpose
languages (e.g. O:XML, X#), are in fact more regular and closest to a
pure tree representation of the abstract syntax tree.

For detail, see:

• Fundamental Problems of Lisp
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/lisp_problems.html
(the first section; on syntax irregularity)

• The Concepts and Confusions of Prefix, Infix, Postfix and Fully
Nested Notations
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/notations.html

also note, nesting matching delimiters is not the only way to
represent a tree. Indentation, such as used in Python or ascii-picture
tree used to represent directories and sub dirs and files, is another
form, arguably has more clarity than nesting with delimiters. As far
as i known, there were a couple such proposal/spec/library with
working implementation of this syntax that works for Scheme lisp.

in general, the question is what are ways to represent a tree
structure visually using text. The lisp, Mathematica approach is
nesting matching pairs. Ascii-picture approch is using lines to
represent a tree node and indentation to represent their level.
(python's syntax borrows this idea, however not in a pure form, in the
sense that the source code's visual representation does not correspond
to python's AST, far from it)

Note here, one of the important aspect here is VISUALLY. Because
otherwise any syntax is abstract syntax tree by definition. This
criterion can be formalized mathematically, by saying that the parser
for such a syntax should be very simple as having just one heuristics
that is based on recursion. (i dont have expertise in parsing, but in
parser jargon, i think there are simple terms to describe this class
of syntax, something like: its lexical grammar can be parsed by
parsing expression grammar)

Another important aspect here is that the source code of lang with
such syntax also needs to remain human readable and practically usable
for programers to type conveniently. This is the reason, lisp has few
irregular syntax introduced. Mathematica, take the approach of a layer
of syntax on top of the regular. This in my opinion has 2 major
advantages: A: the regularity of the syntax is unadulterated. B:
arbitrary shorter, traditional, or algebraic syntax can be introduced.
This is also why, python's syntax isn't a pure representation of its
abstract syntax tree, else, to code “print 3+4*5†becomes:

print
+
3
*
4
5

As for XML derived languages, the problem of verbosity and nesting
largely remains. The practiced solution seems to head towards a
specialized editor so that programers work on the editor's simpler
representation instead of the source code. (e.g. much of MathML, and
conversely Microsoft Word with its XML file format)

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄
 

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