Antonio Vieiro scripsit:

> In the example above you want *sequential* evaluation (so as not to mess
> up with random internals, if those are not synchronized, becasue random
> that has an internal state), but you can evaluate operands in any order
> because '+' is commutative.

I'm going to highlight this not because I think you mean it, but because
it's an easy slip of the mind to make.  The arguments to any function,
whether commutative or associative or both or neither, can be evaluated
in any order desired.  Those properties matter only when the called
procedure actually *processes* its arguments.  Even if (- (a) (b))
calls b before a, the - procedure will still return the right answer.

-- 
It was impossible to inveigle           John Cowan <[email protected]>
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Into offering the slightest apology
For his Phenomenology.                      --W. H. Auden, from "People" (1953)

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