I'd say on the basis of convenience, since we get to serialize and deserialize for free (o with customizations), and for most cases the author on both ends is likely to be the same person or team. For other languages, producers don't work any harder either way, and consumers are free to interpret both the schema and data as they need. sexp's only have a list notation because that's all lisp had, and even then, some people got it all for free.
On Saturday, September 8, 2012 6:29:06 AM UTC-7, Steven E. Harris wrote: > > Michael Fogus <mef...@gmail.com <javascript:>> writes: > > > Data formats do not exist in a vacuum. They are parsed by languages. > > Some may have a fine-grained distinction between lists, arrays/vectors > > and sets and some may not. > > The concern I have is for someone wanting to define a format atop EDN -- > or, to put it differently, to define a schema for it. If we want to > define a structure to be represented in EDN such as a list of a person's > favorite colors, on what basis would the schema author choose between > list and vector notation? Is there a higher-level abstract type that he > specify and require that a conforming processor accept either a list or > vector literal? > > Even if he could mandate that, say, the favorite color list is of type > "sequence" -- listed in descending order of preference -- then an author > creating the EDN to represent such a person again has to make a choice > between a list and a vector, again without a clear basis for his > decision. > > As an appeal to prior art, Rivest's "S-Expressions" Internet-Draft¹ used > only a single list structure, though it does define three different > encodings for that structure. > > > Footnotes: > ¹ http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/Sexp.txt > > -- > Steven E. Harris > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
