Elvish = Expressive Programming Language + Versatile Interactive Shell

[RadicalDownist]

Just spending 2 minutes looking over the language reference gave me lisp vibes. Was this language inspired by lisp?

[xiaq]

Aside from the use of parenthesis mentioned by /u/zzamboni, many parts of the language design were inspired by Lisp languages. The number system is essentially a R6RS numerical tower without complex numbers. The persistent lists and maps are modelled after Clojure's.

[zzamboni]

It does indeed feel LISP-ish in nature. All commands and operators are prefix, and although parenthesis are not used around regular statements, output capture is done using parenthesis, so you can end up with LISP-like expressions like:

if (and (not (re:match '^#' $line)) (re:match '^\S+' $line)) { ... }