A syntax for emulating Java property files, which is readable by both Scheme and Clojure?

Question

As a continuation of Using Lisp or Scheme for runtime configuration of Java programs, I am looking at having a Java property file "replacement" which can contain code in addition to plain Java strings. Java property files look like:

key1=value1
key2=value2
...

For fun I am playing with an elderly JScheme (due to size) but came to think of that it would be useful to have a file format that would be compatible with Clojure. This would allow the usage of the same syntax for just small "read my configuration"-usages as well as larger systems using Clojure. The idea is then that the values can now be evaluated instead of just being static strings.

I am not very experienced with Scheme or Clojure, but it appears that vector is available in both, but the short-cut syntax is different (#(...) compared to [...]).

Is there a syntax for representing a "Java property" data structure which is both valid Scheme and Clojure programs? Please show actual code.

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EDIT: After looking at the (props ...) suggestion and brushing up my Lisp skills some more with ELisp and JScheme, I found that

(list 
 "key1" "value1" 
 "key2" "value"
 )

might be the simplest way to do this with a syntax not too far from a property file.

Answer 1

Assuming you don't want to create scheme reader macros to read clojure map literals (and clojure doesn't support custom reader macros), how about defining a "props" function:

(props 'key1 value1 'key2 value2 ...)

Now in clojure define props as

(def props hash-map)

and similarly in scheme, then you can just eval the props expression in either language.

you can get a bit more funky and make props a macro that quotes the keys (assuming the keys are symbols) or leave it as is and get more flexibility at the cost of having to quote the keys.