/B-expr

An alternative to S-expressions.

Primary LanguageRacket

B-expression

The known S-expression is a useful format. Some programming languages (notably Scheme and Racket) use it as a low-level format in the processing of programs.

But this format is different from what can typically be found in computer programs. Many widely used programming languages use groupers more than () and [], and seperators more than white-space characters. So I am wondering if we can find something like S-expression but more similar to typical computer programs.

I should mentioned that this idea is inspired by Shrubberry.

I also should mentioned that one benefit of having an intermediate format is to define a domain on which macros work on.

Constraints

I want to be able to use indentation to group things.

I want to have different kinds of parenthesis.

I want to support a good portion of the grammar rules of indentation-based language (notably Python)

The design

Blocks are marked by indentation

B-expr ::= block
         | groupOf("(", ")", ",")
         | groupOf("[", "]", ",")
         | groupOf("{", "}", ",")
block  ::= seq: