From: Jean-Hugues ROBERT <jean_hugues_robert@...>
Date: 2004-05-04T06:39:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Lazy evaluation (evil)

At 17:24 03/05/2004 +0900, you wrote:
>I would say the two remaining distinguishing characterstics for a 
>functional language are:
>(1) discourage side effects
>(2) functions as first class values
>   You can write a function that takes a function and returns a new
>   modified function with reasonable syntax.
>Ruby, and indeed all object-oriented languages, fail (1) since the main 
>thing they do is to pass around mutable objects. (2) is a bit harder to 
>call. But I would say Ruby fails this too. Mainly because of the fact that 
>"methods" have a different calling syntax than "method objects" and "procs".

Would the last one succeed if there was something like a Lvalue class,
with auto dereferencing by the interpretor ?
f = ref proc { |*args| p args } # or f = ref method :p, "ref" creates a 
Lvalue instance.
f( "hello") # => ["hello"], proc/meth's getter() invoked, alias for []()
p f         # => [], proc's proc/meth's getter() invoked, alias for []()
f = "world" # => ["world"], proc/meth's setter(x) invoked, alias for 
something like []=() ?
getter/setter are bad names, I hope to find better ones by
the time I issue the "match, assign & Lvalue" RCR.

EOM
Yours,
Jean-Hugues

>So I wouldn't say that Ruby is a functional language.
>
>// Niklas

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