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From: quale@picard.cs.wisc.edu (Douglas E. Quale)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: On whether C has first-class composable functions
Message-ID: <1991Feb6.161639.18311@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 6 Feb 91 16:16:39 GMT
References: <29224:Feb419:06:0191@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1991Feb5.144815.23239@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <1234:Feb520:27:2391@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
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Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
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In article <1234:Feb520:27:2391@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>
>As I said at the beginning of this discussion, you're wrong. The very
>first implementation posted (mine) dynamically allocated the composed,
>first-class functions.

I'm quite certain that you are completely, absolutely and undisputedly wrong.

Functions cannot be dynamically allocated in C.

C does not have first-class functions.

If arrays and structures couldn't be dynamically allocated in C, would you
call C arrays and structs first class?

The comparison between C arrays and functions is interesting:

If C arrays were limited to the same allocations permitted to functions,
all arrays would be global static variables and no more arrays could be
created at runtime.

I have serious doubts about whether you would know what to do with
dynamically allocated functions if you had them.

-- Doug Quale
quale@picard.cs.wisc.edu