Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 24, 2006 at 08:21:12AM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
>   
>> So, in other words, I don't think you're going to find a "simple" way to
>> do this, unless you're willing to sacrifice accuracy.
>>     
>
> What he said -- you won't do better than indent(1) with a "simple" tool.
> But if you want an elegant way to do this, I'd urge you to do it in LISP;
> every tool has its own best use, and this is the kind of thing LISP is
> very, very good at.
>
> Thor
>   

Out of a sense of curious, (and I know I'm going to regret asking
later), what is it about Lisp that makes it so great this kind of thing?

I played around with Lisp only briefly (well Scheme really) but that was
many years ago.  (Hacking on AFS and prior to that in school).  I don't
recall coming away thinking it had any greatness where lexical analysis
was concerned, so I presume I must have missed some really good points.

-- 
Garrett D'Amore, Principal Software Engineer
Tadpole Computer / Computing Technologies Division,
General Dynamics C4 Systems
http://www.tadpolecomputer.com/
Phone: 951 325-2134  Fax: 951 325-2191