From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5EC4DBC75 for ; Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:33:24 +0100 (CET) Received: from pauillac.inria.fr (pauillac.inria.fr [128.93.11.35]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id j1HKXN1I018553 for ; Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:33:24 +0100 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 VAA06155 for ; Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:33:23 +0100 (MET) Received: from alex.barettalocal.com (host21-68.pool80116.interbusiness.it [80.116.68.21]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id j1HKXMvw020877 for ; Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:33:23 +0100 Received: from [127.0.0.1] (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by alex.barettalocal.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id CDF992BAA5F; Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:33:22 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <4214FF92.7020205@barettadeit.com> Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 21:33:22 +0100 From: Alex Baretta User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20050105 Debian/1.7.5-1 X-Accept-Language: it, en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jason Hickey Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Immediate recursive functions References: <4214B8F1.7010402@barettadeit.com> <4214E9DE.8040107@cs.caltech.edu> In-Reply-To: <4214E9DE.8040107@cs.caltech.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Miltered: at nez-perce with ID 4214FF93.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 4214FF92.001 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; baretta:01 caml-list:01 recursive:01 wrote:01 baretta:01 wrote:01 syntax:01 fixpoint:01 rec:01 abstractions:01 recursion:01 recursive:01 ...:98 lambda:01 syntactic:01 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.2 (2004-11-16) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.1 required=5.0 tests=FORGED_RCVD_HELO autolearn=disabled version=3.0.2 X-Spam-Level: Jason Hickey wrote: > Alex Baretta wrote: > >> I sometimes feel the need for a mu operator. I'm thinking of something >> like the following: .. > > I can't give any arguments why your specific syntax is not allowed. In > principle it isn't necessary, since a general fixpoint can be defined. Why, of course it isn't needed! Neither is let rec needed for that matter once you have the fun construct. Y-combinators are all around you ... Of course, a large number of language features are just syntactic sugar which boils down to lambda abstractions and beta reductions. Explicit recursion is one of these. What I'm asking for is why the language does not provide the sugar for the mu recursive expressions. Alex -- ********************************************************************* http://www.barettadeit.com/ Baretta DE&IT A division of Baretta SRL tel. +39 02 370 111 55 fax. +39 02 370 111 54 Our technology: The Application System/Xcaml (AS/Xcaml) The FreerP Project