It's a "belief" of mine. Data in blocks are just literal data until a REDUCE. Nifty cool data-type! data, but still just the literal data. Explicit or implicit in other words like DO or paren expressions in COMPOSE, to me REDUCE is one of the magic concepts that lets REBOL look and feel easy while being deep and vast.
Now explaining part of the belief. It started dawning on me when I began the trek to figuring out what the heck lit-words were and why REBOL needs them. The rest is just example; ... being unable to explain REBOL in a way that is truthful and not just the look and feel easy bit. a: 42 b: 9 data: [a b] literaldata: ['a 'b] human: ['a 'is a 'and 'b 'is b] ; the type? of these entries is word! probe data [a b] probe reduce data [42 9] ; integer! reduces to the same integer! probe reduce reduce data [42 9] ; the type? of the entries is lit-word!, reduced to word! probe reduce literaldata [a b] probe reduce reduce literaldata [42 9] ; lit-word! mixed with word! probe reduce human [a is 42 and b is 9] ; the word is is not bound to a context that can give a value probe reduce reduce human ** Script Error: is has no value Cheers, Brian On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:23:53 -0400, Emeka <[email protected]> wrote: > Why REDUCEd? I am a bit confused now. > > Emeka > > On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 10:13 PM, Brian Tiffin <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> >> On Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:10:34 -0400, Emeka <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > Hello All, >> > >> > This where I got my conclusion. >> > >> > I mentioned before that blocks are a container type. An ordered >> sequence >> > of >> > values. Actually they are an ordered sequence of un-evaluated values. >> > What >> > that means is that when a block itself is evaluated the values it >> > contains >> > are not evaluated. The values a block contains are evaluated when a >> > function >> > is applied to the block >> >> >> > >> > Is the last statement correct? >> >> Properly, (and I've proven myself wrong in technical discussions about >> REBOL's inner workings on many occasions), I think a better expression >> would be >> >> The values a block contains are evaluated when the block is REDUCEd. >> >> I think. >> >> Cheers, >> Brian >> -- >> To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to >> lists at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject. >> >> > -- To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to lists at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject.
