From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: "Samuel Wales" <samologist@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Searching for tags or todo keywords
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:15:06 -0700
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To: Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl>
Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org

On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 12:10, Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> wrote:
> I would like to have parenthesis, but since the parsing is done by string
> processing, any parenthesis in one of the search strings would be difficult
> to handle.

Have you considered using Lisp syntax, perhaps as an alternate?

Benefits include: trivial to parse (no parsing at all -- let Lisp
parse and maybe even eval for you!), easier for the user to remember
(for some of us :)), orthogonal, easy to extend (even with
user-defined functions), easier to quote and escape, consistent,
standard, free of precedence lists, proven technology,
pretty-printable, print-readable, etc.

The old syntax can easily be converted to sexp, thus separating syntax
from semantics and ensuring that the behavior is the same -- without
making anybody have to switch.

Just a possibility.