[shasta]

One question is why the Lisp code doesn't use the letter E as much as every language? Is that just due to normalizing of parentheses?

[chacham15]

While I do not know standard lisp, according to my memory of scheme the following list of c keywords containing the letter 'e' exist in scheme: while.

while the following do not: break, case, continue, default, double, else, enum, extern, register, return, signed, sizeof, typedef, unsigned, volatile

[PerryCox]

It probably gets used about the same amount as the other languages, it's just that the parentheses get used an insane amount and outweigh all the other characters.

[waterlesscloud]

It might be more interesting to see these with the vowels factored out.

[waterhouse]

  ~ $ curl -s 'http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/onlisp.lisp' | egrep -o '.' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr
  18641  
  3277 )
  3276 (
  2561 e
  2159 a
  1934 s
  1903 r
  1672 n
  1661 t
  1477 l
  1380 o
  1287 c
  1282 d
  1067 p
  1064 i
  1030 m
  [...]

Without vowels:

  18641  
  3277 )
  3276 (
  1934 s
  1903 r
  1672 n
  1661 t
  1477 l
  1287 c
  1282 d
  1067 p
  1030 m
   929 f
   852 b
   654 ,
   601 g
  [...]

[nathan_long]

> 3277 ) > 3276 (

My first thought: 'unmatched paren?'

But I bet there's a smiley face on that page somewhere.

EDIT: If there is, I don't see it.

[ordinary]

  (let ((rpar (get-macro-character #\) )))

Escaped. :)