From: Joe Cheng <code@...>
Date: 2005-07-26T11:48:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Lisp on Lines

zak.wilson@gmail.com wrote:

>It's the same in Lisp. In your first example, "test".length gets
>evaluated, and that value is assigned to a:
>
>Ruby:
>a = "test".length
>a.class #Fixnum
>a #4
>
>a = lambda {"test".length}
>a.class #Proc
>a.call() #4
>
>Lisp:
>(setf a (length "test"))
>(a) ;error
>(type-of a) ;(INTEGER 4 4)
>a ;4
>
>(setf a (lambda () (length "test")))
>(type-of a) ;EVAL:INTERPRETED-FUNCTION
>(funcall a) ;4
>  
>
Sorry, please bear with me... the Lisp I had in mind was more like:

(setf a #'length)
(funcall a "foo")

(Hard to make an exact parallel because Ruby has methods not functions, 
and Lisp AFAIK has functions not methods...?)

Setting a variable to the function itself seems pretty different than 
wrapping a call to the function in a lambda, but honestly, now I can't 
think of what the actual implications would be... other than a little 
bit of additional terseness in calls like

(reduce #'+ '(1 2 3))
vs.
[1, 2, 3].inject {|a,b|a+b}

Are they really, for all intents and purposes, the same?