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<br><div><div>On Aug 20, 2008, at 9:25 PM, Joe Marshall wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">The thing I *really* want is for there to be a subset of Scheme</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">that supports pure functional programming where it is obvious,</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">by cursory inspection, that there are no side effects.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>No explicit</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">calls to SET! (or set-car!, rplaca, etc.) means no side effects</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">period.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>R5RS didn't have this because it required letrec to expand</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">into let + set! whether it needed it or not.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I was hoping that</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">R6RS would improve on this by at least *allowing* an implementation</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">to use a fixed-point if possible.</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Me, too. </div><div><br></div><div>In the case of letrec, though, what if it were primitive? It might be implemented using let/set! (or something like it) but its only side-effect</div><div>is to bind a name. If I recall correctly, Haskell uses a single let that allows for recursive definitions much like letrec in Scheme.</div><div><br></div><div>It would be interesting to have a fixed point operator made explicit in the language. I may be out of my depth here, but in a stack based </div><div>(as opposed to reduction based) implementation, I soppose that would mean capturing continuations (to handle the Y f => f steps).</div><br><blockquote type="cite"> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">The more I program, the more I get the feeling that the case against</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">side effects is vastly understated even by the people that object</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">the most to them.</font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px"><br></p> </blockquote></div><br><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><div>"Mathematics is the science of patterns."</div><div>--Lynn Arthur Steen, 1988</div><div><br></div><div><div><a href="http://www.gwoodhouse.com">http://www.gwoodhouse.com</a></div><div><a href="http://GregWoodhouse.ImageKind.com">http://GregWoodhouse.ImageKind.com</a></div><div><br></div></div><div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span> </div><br></body></html>