From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id JAA09838 for caml-red; Tue, 22 Aug 2000 09:45:39 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id XAA05202 for ; Mon, 21 Aug 2000 23:42:01 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from cepheus.azstarnet.com (cepheus.azstarnet.com [169.197.56.195]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.10.0/8.10.0) with ESMTP id e7LLg0f20729 for ; Mon, 21 Aug 2000 23:42:00 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from dylan (dialup19ip054.tus.azstarnet.com [169.197.39.54]) by cepheus.azstarnet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id OAA21001 for ; Mon, 21 Aug 2000 14:41:55 -0700 (MST) X-Sent-via: StarNet http://www.azstarnet.com/ Message-ID: <000d01c00bb8$fb3e3560$210148bf@dylan> From: "David McClain" To: Subject: Language Design Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 14:44:26 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.5 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Sender: weis@pauillac.inria.fr John Max Skaller said: > I am designing a programming language (the compiler is written in ocaml) which is a procedural language with 'purely functional' expressions (using eager evaluation). Function closures can access their context, which procedural statements my change between building the closure and evaulating it. Procedural closures may mutate their environment. DM says: I, for one, have fought for many years with languages that insisted on a division between functions and procedures as you describe them. I have found the unified "everything is a function" approach to be most appealing. In particular, the worst offenders are those languages that insist on syntactic distinctions such as Fortran, RSI/IDL, and Basic. I cannot be alone in having difficulty remembering when a routine, whose result I don't really need, is to be called as a function, or as a procedure. I hope you find an answer to your question, but I do not look forward to another such language. Sincerely David McClain, Sr. Scientist, Raytheon Systems Co., Tucson, AZ