[racket-dev] using the Y combinator to...

From: The Configurator (configurator at gmail.com)
Date: Wed Aug 4 12:20:14 EDT 2010

I'll hijack the thread since I've been meaning to ask about the Y
combinator.
>From SICP I've seen that the Y combinator is the function
(define (y f)
  ((lambda (x) (f (x x)))
   (lambda (x) (f (x x)))))

This makes mathematical sense, since
(y f)
= ((lambda (x) (f (x x))) (lambda (x) (f (x x))))
= (f ((lambda (x) (f (x x))) (lambda (x) (f (x x)))))
= (f (y f))

But when actually applying it:
// g improves a function to get a ceiling function. The fixed point would be
similar to (lambda (x) (inexact->exact (ceiling x)))
(define (g f)
  (lambda (x)
    (if (<= x 0)
        0
        (+ 1 (f (- x 1))))))

> ((g (g (g (g (g #f))))) 3.3)
4

Now let's step through
((y g) 3.3)
= (((lambda (x) (g (x x))) (lambda (x) (g (x x)))) 3.3)
= ((g ((lambda (x) (g (x x))) (lambda (x) (g (x x))))) 3.3)
now, to get the (g ...) result we need to apply g to it's operand. For that,
we need to evaluate it:
= ((g (g ((lambda (x) (g (x x))) (lambda (x) (g (x x)))))) 3.3)
= ((g (g (g ((lambda (x) (g (x x))) (lambda (x) (g (x x)))))))) 3.3)
= ((g (g (g (g ((lambda (x) (g (x x))) (lambda (x) (g (x x))))))))) 3.3)

And I just ran out of memory.

What am I missing here?
It seems obvious to me that if we add a delay/force or somesuch thing it
solves the problem. But that's not the y-combinator I was shown.
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