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Comment by lliamander | Hacker News Reader

Indeed, I like that better than either typical prefix or infix nested expressions.

What do you advise in the case the expression tree is a little bit more complex?

For example: (setv result (- (/ (+ 1 3 88) 2) (* 8 (+ 3 2)))

Because the operators all take a list of values it's sometimes convenient to format them like any other long list, with each nested sub-expression on its own line to form a tree:

    (setv result (- (/ (+ 1 3 88)
                       2)
                    (* 8 
                       (+ 3 2)))

Another possibility is to use a (let ...) to give nested values temporary names, like:

    (setv result (let ((first (/ (+ 1 3 88) 2))
                       (second (* 8 (+ 3 2))))
                   (- first second)))

It helps if "first" and "second" have meaningful names like "velocity" or "force" that can describe what they are.

I don't see any clever way to make that more readable. I would have to break it into two subexpressions and then take the difference. i.e.

    (setv e0 (-> (+ 1 3 88) (/ 2)))
    (setv e1 (-> (+ 3 2) (* 8)))
    (setv result (- e0 e1))

BTW doesn't setv support multiple pairs?

    (setv e0 (-> (+ 1 3 88) (/ 2)))
          e1 (-> (+ 3 2) (* 8))
          result (- e0 e1))

like setq and setf in CL.

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