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From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Complexity of syntax
Message-ID: <304@coatimundi.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 20 Dec 90 07:33:09 GMT
Sender: news@cs.arizona.edu
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In article  <1990Dec19.222059.6878@mathrt0.math.chalmers.se> Lennart Augustsson writes:
]>
]C does not have functions as first class data, you can only use functions
]pointers as data.  To see the difference just try to write a function
]that does function composition.

C does not let you construct functions at run time (which makes the
first-class functions rather anemic) but C does have first class
functions by the usual definition of the term.  The term "first-class"
just means that the type of object in question can be passed as an
argument to procedures and returned from procedures as a result.  In
procedural languages like C, it also means that you can assign the
values to variables.  First-class does not imply any particular
primitive operations on the objects (like construction), and the only
operation that an object needs to make it a function is function
application.

It is not really relevant that the things you pass around are
described in the language documentation as "function pointers".  They
behave exactly like a function.
--
					David Gudeman
gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
noao!arizona!gudeman