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Re: OT: functional languages (was: Politics of Java)



Colin Watson wrote:

> You can pass function pointers around in C happily enough. I appreciate
> it's less theoretically elegant than having functions as first-class
> citizens, and that it doesn't allow as much compile-time checking, but
> does it really limit you?

Yes, it does. C function pointers are just pointers to code; there is no
associated environment, no lexical scoping of variables, etc. This is
critical to the concept of a functional language (and the lack of
lexical scoping is one of the major reasons why traditional Lisp cannot
be considered an FPL).

Craig

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