Re: How to improve the readability of (any) LISP or any highlevel functional language to the level of FORTH ?

[Doug Hoffman]

On 1/18/11 5:55 PM, m_l_g3 wrote:
> On Jan 1, 10:04 am, girosenth<girose...@india.com>  wrote:
> > How to improve the readability of (any) LISP or any highlevel
> > functional language to the level of FORTH ?
>
> ...
> > How do you make it readable ?
> ...
> > (f (g (h (j (k (l ops)))...)))
>
> (e
>     (f
>        (g (h i)
>           (j k l)
>        )
>        (m (n o (p q))
>           (r (s t) u)
> )  )  )
>
> The rule: if you don't see the closing paren moving the eyes down,
> it's on the right.
> But it either to the right or down, no other option.

I would assume that Lispers would use a source editor that automatically 
hilights corresponding parens (e.g., selct a left paren and the right 
paren becomes bold or whatever) and checks for missing parens 
automatically before compilation is attempted.


> As to Forth, you may try to layout control structures on the right,
> as if RPN is not enough:
>
> : MAX   2dup>       if
>              drop    else
>              nip     then
> ;

I agree with vusual "aligning" for control words.  But I would do it 
differently (stack comment please!).  The above suggests to me that ELSE 
is consuming the result of the DROP and THEN is consuming the result of 
the NIP.

Better, IMHO:

: MAX ( n1 n2 -- max )
  2dup > IF   drop
         ELSE nip
         THEN ;

Read in English as " <condition> iftrue DROP, otherwise NIP, then continue".

-Doug