On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Deryk Barker wrote: > Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 20:40:29 -0800 > From: Deryk Barker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: Debian Users <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: OT: functional languages (was: Politics of Java) > Resent-Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 23:01:34 -0600 (CST) > Resent-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Thus spake Craig Dickson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > > > Pete Harlan wrote: <snip> > I'd certainly want to call it functional and would go further and say > that LISP is also an impure functional language. PH's dikat is IMHO a > little too rigid. What about Milner's SML, which also supports > side-effects. That is invariably, in my experience, referred to as a > functional language. > > The importance of LISP, Scheme, ML, Miranda, et. al. is surely the > establishing of a functional programming *style*, which these > languages encourage (to a greater or lesser extent). > > After all, you *can* do FP in C or Pascal - it's just a lot more work.
Pascal and C do not have functions as first class citizens, but Pascal closer than C. In Pascal, but not C, you can pass a function as a function parameter, but you can't return a function from a function in either language. Consquently you cannot do any of the nice self extensions that having functions as first class citizens provides. C and Pascal do not have continuations. I've not done anything with continuations yet, so I cannot talk about that beyond noting the fact. Further comments anyone? David Teague -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
