From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2004-07-10T07:25:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Functional Ruby (Re: Why I don't use Ruby.)

Sean Russell wrote:

> Technically, in a purely functional language, you also shouldn't be
> able to reassign a new value to 'b', once you set it.  This has
> nothing to do with the scope, and indeed, there are no such things as
> "variables" in *purely* functional languages, because they shouldn't
> vary.  What you can have is aliases for values.  Haskell, for example,
> allows you to use "let" and "where" to assign values to aliases that
> look alot like variables, but are immutable.
> 
> --- SER
> 
> 
Indeed.  People learning XSLT are often bit by the use of the word 
'variable' when used to refer to things that in fact may not vary.  One 
then has to learn new ways of accumulating values, or incrementing 
counters, or rewriting code where one might have otherwise used variable 
variables.

James