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From: bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: BNF for LISP
Message-ID: <771@bu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Nov-85 17:27:54 EST
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.771
Posted: Wed Nov 20 17:27:54 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Nov-85 03:58:15 EST
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 12

And the answer is...ya can't do it. At least not in any useful way.
Readmacros are one good counter-example, hunks and comma syntax
((a . b . c) and (a , b , c)) were all forgotten for a while. Super
parens (closing off some set of open parens, either all or up to
the last super-open such as "<defun fact (a) (cond ((< a 2) 1)(t ....>"
or some such are hard I guess.

The real answer is, take it from people who have built a (read), it's
hairy and BNF doesn't help (now consider things like backquote syntax.)
It's a nice fantasy but not useful.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University