Xref: utzoo comp.lang.misc:3848 comp.lang.c:25000 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!lfcs!nick From: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.c Subject: Re: The Fundamental Concept of Programming language X Keywords: programming languages, abstractions Message-ID: <1532@castle.ed.ac.uk> Date: 10 Jan 90 12:00:23 GMT References: <1470@mdbs.UUCP> <1782@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <2886@water.waterloo.edu> Reply-To: nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell) Followup-To: comp.lang.misc Organization: LFCS Enya Admiration Society Lines: 20 In-reply-to: ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (L.J.Dickey) In article <2886@water.waterloo.edu>, ljdickey@water (L.J.Dickey) writes: >Readers are encouraged to track the progress of SAX (Sharp APL for UNIX), >which has introduced some new combinators. Their vocabulary uses words >like "noun", "verb", "adverb", and "conjunction". An adverb corresponds >to a mathematical operator because it acts on a function ("verb") and >returns a function as a result. Why are "operators" different to functions? What do you do about full higher-order facilities (e.g. higher-order functions returning higher-order functions)? "adadadadadverbs"? > L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo. Nick. -- Nick Rothwell, Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh. nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk !mcvax!ukc!lfcs!nick ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ "...all these moments... will be lost in time... like tears in rain."