S-expressions - Data notation

S-expressions is a data notation created in 1960.

#671on PLDB

64Years Old

In computing, s-expressions, sexprs or sexps (for "symbolic expression") are a notation for nested list (tree-structured) data, invented for and popularized by the programming language Lisp, which uses them for source code as well as data. In the usual parenthesized syntax of Lisp, an s-expression is classically defined as an atom, or an expression of the form (x . y) where x and y are s-expressions. Read more on Wikipedia...

Tags: dataNotation
Early development of S-expressions happened in MIT
ANTLR grammar for S-expressions
See also: (10 related languages) Lisp, Scheme, C, Common Lisp, XML, Python, ISLISP, RFC, I-expressions, Bayer Expressions
Read more about S-expressions on the web: 1.
4 PLDB concepts link to S-expressions: Bayer Expressions, Liso, SUSN, Sweet Expressions

Example from the web:

(x . y)

Example from Wikipedia:

def parse_sexp(string):
    """
    >>> parse_sexp("(+ 5 (+ 3 5))")
    [['+', '5', ['+', '3', '5']]]
    
    """
    sexp = [[]]
    word = ''
    in_str = False
    for char in string:
        if char is '(' and not in_str:
            sexp.append([])
        elif char is ')' and not in_str:
            if word:
                sexp[-1].append(word)
                word = ''
            temp = sexp.pop()
            sexp[-1].append(temp)
        elif char in (' ', '\n', '\t') and not in_str:
            if word:
                sexp[-1].append(word)
                word = ''
        elif char is '\"':
            in_str = not in_str
        else:
            word += char
    return sexp[0]