Domain Specific Languages

Chapter 39. Literal List

Represent language expression with a literal list.

       martin.follows("WardCunningham", "bigballofmud", "KentBeck", "neal4d");

39.1 How It Works

A Literal List is a language construct for forming a list data structure. Many languages provide a direct syntax for Literal List. The most obvious of these is Lisp’s (first second third); Ruby is similar [first, second, third] but not quite as elegant. These structures usually allow lists to be nested; indeed, one way of looking at an entire Lisp program is as a nested list.

Literal Lists are usually used in a function call; the parent function will then take the elements of the list and process them in some way.

Mainstream C-based languages don’t provide a useful nested ...