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From: JWC@IDA.LiU.SE (Jonas Wallgren)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.functional
Subject: The name of the game
Message-ID: <1818@majestix.ida.liu.se>
Date: 14 Apr 90 22:02:03 GMT
Sender: jonwa@majestix.ida.liu.se
Lines: 17
Organisation: CIS Dept, Univ of Linkoping, Sweden

What is a functional language?

There are two main properties:
	1: No assignments, no side effects, referential transparency,
           or whatever you call it.
	2: Higher order functions.

BUT: Is property no. 2 just a nice feature or do you regard it as nessecary for
     a language to be called 'functional'? Does any formal definition?

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Jonas Wallgren                                 |                 JWC@IDA.LiU.SE
Department of Computer and Information Science |
Linkoping University                           |-------------------------------
SE-581 83  Linkoping                           |
Sweden                                         |(\x.xx)(\x.x):(forall a.(a->a))
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