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From: Carsten Dominik <dominik@uva.nl>
Subject: Re: Searching for tags or todo keywords
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:00:28 +0200
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To: Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com>
Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org

Hi Samuel,

yes, a general Lisp syntax is certainly a good idea.  In fact,  
currently the match is also converted into a Lisp form.  However, it  
does not use simple variables that would be great to supply in a user  
form.  The reason is that I am trying to minimize parsing for  
properties and tags, so that these are only located if used.  Still, I  
guess you are right that this is a relatively simple extension to make  
- I will think about it.

- Carsten

On Sep 16, 2008, at 7:15 AM, Samuel Wales wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 12:10, Carsten Dominik  
> <dominik@science.uva.nl> wrote:
>> I would like to have parenthesis, but since the parsing is done by  
>> string
>> processing, any parenthesis in one of the search strings would be  
>> difficult
>> to handle.
>
> Have you considered using Lisp syntax, perhaps as an alternate?
>
> Benefits include: trivial to parse (no parsing at all -- let Lisp
> parse and maybe even eval for you!), easier for the user to remember
> (for some of us :)), orthogonal, easy to extend (even with
> user-defined functions), easier to quote and escape, consistent,
> standard, free of precedence lists, proven technology,
> pretty-printable, print-readable, etc.
>
> The old syntax can easily be converted to sexp, thus separating syntax
> from semantics and ensuring that the behavior is the same -- without
> making anybody have to switch.
>
> Just a possibility.