binary-experiments VS queryjevko.js

Yes, S-expressions come in many flavors, some more minimal than others, some binary. They are all truly wonderful.

The most wonderful to me are the simplest ones, and Jevko grows out of the same spirit as them.

However, it does not attempt to be a new flavor of S-expressions and diverges in ways which to me are worth looking at. I hope it can appeal and be useful not only to minimalist syntax enthusiasts.

BTW Some time ago I've been also experimenting with binary versions of Jevko, certainly with inspiration from both netstrings and Rivest's csexps:

https://github.com/jevko/binary-experiments#asttolengthprefi...

Since then I had some more ideas which I hope to get around to implementing at some point.

The grammar of S-exps on the other hand, I won't quote here, but I assure you it's much more complicated. How much depends on your flavor (Jevko is also simpler in this regard: there is only one flavor, clearly specified).

There is no (intended) ambiguity around whitespace in Jevko: whitespace does not occur explicitly in the grammar. Whitespace characters are just characters. This is the defining feature of the syntax.

For this reason Jevko is more low-level: if you want to treat whitespace in some special way, you have to do that yourself. Although for most use-cases this is very similar and simple, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33334314

But the point is that you can also leave it as-is, e.g.: https://github.com/jevko/queryjevko.js

or do something else -- it's up to your format.

Thank you. :)

> I wonder if I should use it for something...

I'd be honored!

A couple of ideas:

How about a simple configuration format? https://gist.github.com/djedr/681e0199859874b3324eaa84192c42... (I should make a library out of this)

Or you can put it in your query strings to make them more humane: https://github.com/jevko/queryjevko.js

Or make up a markup DSL: https://github.com/jevko/markup-experiments#asttohtmltable

Or serialize game objects in your indie game. Or make it the interface of your experimental app. Or use it to shave off a few unnecessary characters off your data: https://jevko.github.io/compactness.html

No parser in your favorite language? A basic one should be only a couple dozen lines!