Specialized input parsing for code/REPL in DrScheme?

[Shriram Krishnamurthi <shriram@cs.rice.edu>]

Paul,

There have been lots of efforts to create "less parenthesized"
Schemes.  (Rob Warnock, who should be on this list, made a valiant
attempt not very long ago.)  Most die painful deaths.  I don't,
however, know that anyone has gone down the indentation-is-significant
route.  I'm certainly interested in seeing the results.

If you need help with the vagaries of parsing Scheme (certainly, you
shouldn't mess with atomic syntax like that of numbers), you'll find
people here that can help (Matthew wrote the C parser, I wrote much of
the Scheme parser).  You may be able to profitably reuse the C and
Scheme parsers for atomic data, which can save you a lot of work.

Finally, a good Henry Baker quote (comp.compilers, 10/28/94):

  >5. Cleverness on the part of the language designer: anybody looking
  >for a really frustrating student project might consider building a
  >parser for Occam, in which there are no explicit brackets for compound
  >statements but nesting is indicated by indentation.

  Cut yourself on Occam's razor, I see.  :-)

Shriram