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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/ .




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