On: Some thoughts on JSON vs. S-expressions (2012)

[ktpsns]

Great comment! Can you share some information about the toolchain used around S-expressions this way? Did you really write literals in that way without quoting, etc.?

I like S-expressions (data and/or code in S-expressions) a lot and would like to use it more.

[tikhonj → ktpsns]

They open sourced some of their core tools for it ([1], [2]) along with some documentation and examples.

Since it was designed as a data format (comparable to JSON) rather than a programming-language syntax, there's a lot less need for quoting.

[1]: https://github.com/janestreet/universe/tree/master/sexp

[2]: https://github.com/janestreet/universe/tree/master/sexplib

[wglb → ktpsns]

While this is not a full answer, here is some relevant info: https://sabracrolleton.github.io/json-review.

Incidentally for the grandparent's comment about formatting, I would use something slightly different:

  (Here is a sentence with (:i some words) (:b emphasized) in (:i (:b different)) ways.)

This is similar to what is used for some of the html-to-S-expression conversions.