#i is the prefix for inexact
    #e is the prefix for exact

The `i` in `8i` is the imaginary unit. The `1@1` is the polar notation for complex numbers.

The `10#` is a compatibility remain (the Scheme authors wanted a way to see how many signifant digits were known. In `10#` there 2. So `#` stands for "some digit". In most implementations this is read as 0. More details at [1]

An `#` followed by a list datum is read as a vector. Thus `#()` is an empty vector and `()` is an empty list.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/10936403/23567

Complicated? Well, to support both inexact (floating point) and exact numbers (bignums and fractions) it makes sense to have `#i` and `#e` to explicitl choose. The default is (more or less): numbers with . are inexact the others are exact.

This was a wild ride. I'm torn on whether this feels like the Reader is bloated/polluted or whether this is the coolest numerical parser I've ever used. You can really do a lot to coerce the these numbers just by inserting an {o,s,e,i,b,#} into the number, with different semantics depending on the position of the character.

Somewhat overwhelming, I can only hope there's some elegance underlying it all...

Not necessarily a bad thing but also not exactly what I would call "expressive".

You may be able to build anything you want --- which may be efficient when communicating with the machine. But I wonder about now well this would communicate with other programmers.