[plt-scheme] Smallest set of operators

On 2/2/07, Paulo J. Matos <pocm at soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 2/2/07, Matthias Felleisen <matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> >
> > On Feb 2, 2007, at 7:36 AM, Paulo J. Matos wrote:
> >
> > > On 2/2/07, Matthias Felleisen <matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> 1. You need to specify what you mean with define.
> > >>
> > >
> > > define = implement.
> >
> >
> > This definition is naive. Just use ONE SINGLE combinator (X, see
> > Barendregt) and you can compile EVERY language to it. -- Matthias
> >
> >
>
> You mean you can compile Scheme to X only? continuations, side-effects, etc?

The point here is that the question you are asking needs to be asked
carefully, or you may not get the answer you are asking for. What do
you really want to do?

Every computable function can be described with X (or a turing machine
or lambda or ... lots of other things). If you want to know how to
locally replace uses of certain features with other ones, that's a
different (and probably more interesting) question.

Robby