From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2004-07-10T00:14:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Functional Ruby (Re: Why I don't use Ruby.)

On Friday 09 July 2004 05:02, Florian Gross wrote:
> Sean O'Dell wrote:
> >
> > You can have variables in a functional language, but what you can't have
> > are globals that act statefully, causing any functions you write to
> > return different values when passed the same parameter values.  You can
> > have (pseudocoded):
>
> As far as I know LISP does indeed have closures -- and I can emulate
> globals with them in Ruby like this:
>
> Oh, and about not having side-effects: Most functional languages have
> them when doing I/O.

I don't remember closures from my LISP days, but perhaps that's a memory 
issue.  I/O has always been an exception, but I think you have to have 
exceptions to get variance into the program and I/O is a common programming 
paradigm and a great way to introduce variance.

	Sean O'Dell