elisp reader: REQUEST

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to comp.emacs.xemacs as well. REQUEST: Someone mentioned that one of the problems with the (X)Emacs Lisp reader is that you can't do reader macros (as far as I know). Specifically, there was mention of how elisp doesnt' recognize this to be a vector: #(1 2 3 4 5) I think, first of all, that this should be interpreted as such. Even more so, I think that reader macros should be allowed in elisp, such that something like this would work: (defmacro defdelim (left right param-list &body body) "Define a new LISP delimiter!" `(ddfn ,left ,right #'(lambda ,param-list ,＠body))) (let ((rpar (get-macro-character #\)))) (defun ddfn (left right fn) (set-macro-character right rpar) (set-macro-character left #'(lambda (stream char1 char2) (declare (ignore char1 char2)) (apply fn (read-delimited-list right stream t)))))) (defdelim #\[ #\] (&rest args) `(vector ,＠args)) i.e. the functions `set-macro-character' and other reader functions should be included. What do people think? This would be excellent because then XEmacs would be an even better editor--it could more easily be made to ``read'' various formats of files. dave