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John Cowan:
> If you go from three layers (c-exprs, n-exprs, sweet-exprs) to just two
> (c-exprs that may contain n-exprs, sweet-exprs), then you don't need a
> separate name for n-exprs.
You don't need a separate *spec*, true. So it would be a lot less visible.
But it's still useful to have a *name* for this notation that accepts f(x):
* Inside curly-infix you'd have a sequence of zero or more *neoteric* expressions, since inside the {...} you would have different rules than the "outside"
* In sweet-expressions, you have indented lines, and each line contains sequences of, well, something. The way we've expressed them is that the lines contain 0 or more neoteric-expressions (we don't allow indentation WITHIN a line to matter).
That said, if that happened, "neoteric-expression" would primarily be used as a name to help carefully define other constructs, as opposed to a name you'd see often outside that context. And that's just fine; giving names to things, to make an overall definition clear and concise, is a good thing.
--- David A. Wheeler