Extending emacs-lisp syntax

Question

I am interested in extending the syntax in emacs-lisp, but I have not found any hints anywhere about the feasibility of this or how to achieve it. I want to try some things that are illustrated here, so that in Emacs, for example, I could type {1 + 2 + 3} and have it interpreted in a program as (+ 1 2 3). I am familiar with some projects to use syntax like ($ 1 + 2 + 3) for this purpose, but I want to try modifying the syntax, not create a new infix function like that.

I did find some documentation on changing syntax tables, but this seems to be more for the editor, and not the lisp parser.

Any pointers?

Answer 1

Emacs reader is not as flexible as that of Common Lisp, so you cannot make it read {a + b + c} as (+ a b c).

Moreover, the experience has shown that doing so is a waste of time: no one ever writes Lisp like that; projects like "readable" you quoted remain a curious demonstration of CL's power rather than something actually usable.