Perl's syntax is designed to be more close to natural language.

Both Lisp and Perl are in the same camp ... I could hardly read an algorithm written in them before learning and actively working with them.

Either way, I'm tired of languages that can only be extended by adding functions. Declarative APIs require much more than that.

> Perl's syntax is designed to be more close to natural language.

s/natural/English/. Some languages can be parsed by computer without problems. For example, simple 15kb C program can parse 100% of technical text in Esperanto, 98% of technical text in Ukrainian (my native language), 84% of technical text in Russian, and so on. Not so simple parser can parse more than 100% of text, i.e. it can fix errors in text.

For me, shell is much closer to my native language than perl or SQL.

PS. AFAIK, there is no natural language in the wild nature. :-/ All human languages are artificial.

I think bad_user might be referring to Larry Wall's post Natural Language Principles in Perl

ref: http://www.wall.org/~larry/natural.html

Perl has a lot of syntax, and Lisp has almost none. Which one is better just depends on your opinion about syntax itself.

Lisp also has a lot of syntax, but it is ON TOP of s-expressions.

Hold Common Lisp next to Perl 5, and you tell me which one has "a lot" of syntax.

I realize that Lisp has some syntax, and of course the fact that everything fits into S-exps is important, but I would not say that it has "a lot" of syntax compared to the vast majority of active languages.

Let's just look at the syntax of Common Lisp's LOOP construct:

    loop [name-clause] {variable-clause}* {main-clause}* => result*

    name-clause::= named name 
    variable-clause::= with-clause | initial-final | for-as-clause 
    with-clause::= with var1 [type-spec] [= form1] {and var2 [type-spec] [= form2]}* 
    main-clause::= unconditional | accumulation | conditional | termination-test | initial-final 
    initial-final::= initially compound-form+ | finally compound-form+ 
    unconditional::= {do | doing} compound-form+ | return {form | it} 
    accumulation::= list-accumulation | numeric-accumulation 
    list-accumulation::= {collect | collecting | append | appending | nconc | nconcing} {form | it}  
                         [into simple-var] 
    numeric-accumulation::= {count | counting | sum | summing | } 
                             maximize | maximizing | minimize | minimizing {form | it} 
                            [into simple-var] [type-spec] 
    conditional::= {if | when | unless} form selectable-clause {and selectable-clause}*  
                   [else selectable-clause {and selectable-clause}*]  
                   [end] 
    selectable-clause::= unconditional | accumulation | conditional 
    termination-test::= while form | until form | repeat form | always form | never form | thereis form 
    for-as-clause::= {for | as} for-as-subclause {and for-as-subclause}* 
    for-as-subclause::= for-as-arithmetic | for-as-in-list | for-as-on-list | for-as-equals-then | 
                        for-as-across | for-as-hash | for-as-package 
    for-as-arithmetic::= var [type-spec] for-as-arithmetic-subclause 
    for-as-arithmetic-subclause::= arithmetic-up | arithmetic-downto | arithmetic-downfrom 
    arithmetic-up::= [[{from | upfrom} form1 |   {to | upto | below} form2 |   by form3]]+ 
    arithmetic-downto::= [[{{from form1}}1  |   {{{downto | above} form2}}1  |   by form3]] 
    arithmetic-downfrom::= [[{{downfrom form1}}1  |   {to | downto | above} form2 |   by form3]] 
    for-as-in-list::= var [type-spec] in form1 [by step-fun] 
    for-as-on-list::= var [type-spec] on form1 [by step-fun] 
    for-as-equals-then::= var [type-spec] = form1 [then form2] 
    for-as-across::= var [type-spec] across vector 
    for-as-hash::= var [type-spec] being {each | the}  
                   {{hash-key | hash-keys} {in | of} hash-table  
                    [using (hash-value other-var)] |  
                    {hash-value | hash-values} {in | of} hash-table  
                    [using (hash-key other-var)]} 
    for-as-package::= var [type-spec] being {each | the}  
                      {symbol | symbols | 
                       present-symbol | present-symbols | 
                       external-symbol | external-symbols} 
                      [{in | of} package] 
    type-spec::= simple-type-spec | destructured-type-spec 
    simple-type-spec::= fixnum | float | t | nil 
    destructured-type-spec::= of-type d-type-spec 
    d-type-spec::= type-specifier | (d-type-spec . d-type-spec) 
    var::= d-var-spec 
    var1::= d-var-spec 
    var2::= d-var-spec 
    other-var::= d-var-spec 
    d-var-spec::= simple-var | nil | (d-var-spec . d-var-spec)

I don't think there are many active languages with a more complex LOOP construct. Add to that, that some implementations have an extensible LOOP that allows to add even more syntax to it.

The syntax for DEFCLASS:

    defclass class-name ({superclass-name}*) ({slot-specifier}*) [[class-option]]

    => new-class

    slot-specifier::= slot-name | (slot-name [[slot-option]])
    slot-name::= symbol
    slot-option::= {:reader reader-function-name}* | 
                   {:writer writer-function-name}* | 
                   {:accessor reader-function-name}* | 
                   {:allocation allocation-type} | 
                   {:initarg initarg-name}* | 
                   {:initform form} | 
                   {:type type-specifier} | 
                   {:documentation string} 
    function-name::= {symbol | (setf symbol)}
    class-option::= (:default-initargs . initarg-list) | 
                    (:documentation string) | 
                    (:metaclass class-name) 

there is much more of this.

LOOP is a good example of syntax creeping its way into Lisp (defclass, not all that much IMO).

As a counterexample that almost makes LOOP syntax look quaint, consider Perl regexes. That is some syntax right there.

Common Lisp has more than 30 special syntactic constructs: block, catch, eval-when, LET, ..., unwind-protect.

It has probably more than a hundred macros that implement syntax: DEFUN, LOOP, DEFMACRO, WITH-OPEN-FILE, DEFPACKAGE, PPRINT-LOGICAL-BLOCK, HANDLER-CASE, ...

It has various basic syntactic elements like function lambda lists, macro lambda lists, etc.

It has FORMAT string syntax.

I'm not trying to win a contest with PERL and its syntax, but thinking that Common Lisp has almost no syntax is misguided. As I mentioned, in Common Lisp much of the syntax is implemented on top of s-expressions.

Stuff like regexp syntax is implemented in Common Lisp libraries. Like this one: http://weitz.de/cl-ppcre/ .