[foobarbaz1234]

I am a fan of Scheme but never got that statement. Why do people say Scheme/Lisp has no syntax? I mean clearly it has a _simple_ syntax, i.e. an expression is either an atom (an identifier, a number, a lambda expression, etc.) or a list of expressions, denoated by "(expr0 expr1 ... exprN). I would say it has a simple, well-thought and powerful syntax.

[taylanub]

It has no syntax (of its own) in that it hijacks s-expression syntax instead. When you want to write Lisp code, you actually write some data structures in the s-expression data format, like when writing some data in JSON or XML. Then a Lisp interpreter or compiler uses an s-expression parser to read that data structure into memory, and operates on that.

Then again, not just every Lisp dialect but even pretty much every implementation has its own s-expression parser with its own extensions to s-expression syntax to make it most convenient to write code in, so there's not a very good decoupling after all. :-P Nevertheless it provides some benefits. Like being able to use something like "paredit" to edit code structurally, and making macro systems somewhat simpler (though hygienic macro systems cannot work with pure s-expression data; it must be annotated with lexical context).

You might find it hard to believe but I love Lisp syntax with all of its parentheses, and am explicitly against, for example, Sweet Expressions (SRFI-110). (Though SRFI-105 is fine.)

By the way another meaning of the word "syntax" actually refers to something within the data structures after the actual concrete syntax has been parsed away. For example when you have a list and its first element is the symbol "if", then that list is a usage of the if syntax. This syntax takes three arguments (further elements of the list): a test, consequent, and alternative. So "syntax" is something like a function here, except it operates during compilation and its arguments are unevaluated sub-structures (roughly, code snippets, though the syntax could interpret them however it wants, like for example how the "lambda" syntax's first argument is a parameter list). That's why we can say "in other languages you can only implement new functions; in Lisp you can also implement new syntax." (In the form of macros.)

[foobarbaz1234]

> It has no syntax (of its own) in that it hijacks s-expression syntax instead. When you want to write Lisp code, you actually write some data structures in the s-expression data format, like when writing some data in JSON or XML. Then a Lisp interpreter or compiler uses an s-expression parser to read that data structure into memory, and operates on that.

My point is that the s-expression format has to be defined (obviously), e.g. you enclose lists in '(' and ')' characters, space symbols separate tokens, etc. In my world these rules are consequences of a defined syntax and saying there is no syntax is just wrong. The reader parses at some point a byte sequence and builds an AST. That Lisp/Scheme has such a simple syntax is a powerful feature of the language but saying it has no syntax just contributes to the belief of misinformed people that Lisp is some kind of strange Voodoo-language which is a bad thing as it is a powerful tool.

[thecombjelly]

It is true that it is a little more nuanced than "has no syntax". The core of the language has very little syntax relative to many of the more popular languages but it still does have some syntax. The confusion also arises because often the syntax it does have looks just the same as function invocation. "or" is syntax whereas "+" is not but they both look the same in invocation. (or fu bar) and (+ 1 2) but "or" is short circuiting and "+" is not. "or" is syntax but it doesn't look like the syntax a lot of people are used to.

In fact, if you use scheme extensively you will probably use more syntax than most languages. Scheme and other lisps are very good at allowing you to create new syntax which is very helpful in creating DSLs which you will run across a lot in scheme libraries and the SRFIs.