It probably gets used about the same amount as the other languages, it's just that the parentheses get used an insane amount and outweigh all the other characters.
~ $ curl -s 'http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/onlisp.lisp' | egrep -o '.' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr
18641
3277 )
3276 (
2561 e
2159 a
1934 s
1903 r
1672 n
1661 t
1477 l
1380 o
1287 c
1282 d
1067 p
1064 i
1030 m
[...]
Without vowels:
18641
3277 )
3276 (
1934 s
1903 r
1672 n
1661 t
1477 l
1287 c
1282 d
1067 p
1030 m
929 f
852 b
654 ,
601 g
[...]
Comments
One question is why the Lisp code doesn't use the letter E as much as every language? Is that just due to normalizing of parentheses?
While I do not know standard lisp, according to my memory of scheme the following list of c keywords containing the letter 'e' exist in scheme: while.
while the following do not: break, case, continue, default, double, else, enum, extern, register, return, signed, sizeof, typedef, unsigned, volatile
It probably gets used about the same amount as the other languages, it's just that the parentheses get used an insane amount and outweigh all the other characters.
It might be more interesting to see these with the vowels factored out.
> 3277 ) > 3276 (
My first thought: 'unmatched paren?'
But I bet there's a smiley face on that page somewhere.
EDIT: If there is, I don't see it.