I agree with Herwig in principal ... even though EDN is not meant to cover the whole set of possible pure Clojure data, if it can be made to cover more (all other things being equal) that would be a Good Thing.
I think it would be possible to fix these edge cases with reader macro dispatches without breaking compatibility. The major snag though is that performance would suffer ... every single keyword or symbol being `pr`d would have to be tested, even those in the vast majority that don't need to be emitted in any special way. So my conclusion is it's not worth trying ... It sucks that the docstring for pr https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/clojure-1.7.0/src/clj/clojure/core.clj#L3552-L3555 fails to mention that the function may succeed and produce a string that the reader will barf on, but I think we're pretty much stuck with it. For posterity: I switched to using Transit for the Clojure(Script) app that had me run across this issue. On Thu, Aug 4, 2016 at 2:23 PM, Herwig Hochleitner <hhochleit...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2016-08-04 13:56 GMT+02:00 Timothy Baldridge <tbaldri...@gmail.com>: > >> The problem is that many do not understand that Clojure data is a >> superset of EDN. The two were never meant to be completely compatible. >> There are many things, especially when dealing with keywords and symbols, >> where its possible to have data that doesn't properly round-trip. >> > > Then fressian and transit are supersets of edn as well. Are those, at > least, meant to be the same set as clojure data? > Also, reader tags are a fantastic opportunity to make arbitrary data > round-trippable. > > An added problem when dealing with EDN is that there is only really one or >> two languages that properly parse it: Clojure and Clojurescript. So it's >> also a poor choice to use in cases where you desire any sort of interop. >> > > There many edn libraries for various languages: https://github.com/ > edn-format/edn/wiki/Implementations > It is true, that there is a lack of compatibility, especially in the > handling of symbols and keywords and the community is hurting for it (I > remember a couple of tedious discussions on the matter) > > see http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJ-1527 https:// > github.com/edn-format/edn/issues/67 ... > > Add on top of all that that EDN parsing is really slow compared to other >> approaches, and you have a lot of compelling reasons to, as Herwig put it, >> "abandon edn, except for hand-written data". >> > > My view is, that those reasons should be eliminated, starting with > interoperability concerns. I still think edn is a fantastic idea and to me > it still holds the promise of being a replacement for json and xml, but > only if we can get our act together and develop it towards that goal. > > Please note, that my "except for hand-written data" was meant to be > hyperbole. Every data is eventually machine-written. > > Abandoning edn would send a fatal signal not just to people in the > community. Especially if we let it slowly die instead of declaring it a > failed experiment in data exchange. > > Imagine if pr wouldn't handle embedded " quotes in strings and the > inofficial recommendation would be to just avoid that use case or use a > different encoding. > > And yes, the original problem that caused the creation of Transit was "how >> do we get data from language A to language B while still staying fast, not >> implementing a ton of code, and keeping rich data (dates should be dates, >> not strings)." >> > > I like the idea of having various encodings for different uses, but we > should strife towards compatibility. > > -- > 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 > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "Clojure" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/ > topic/clojure/Rc_b4_Da-KU/unsubscribe. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- 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 --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
