@wim_v12e it's kind of a wibbly wobbly category, but...

Devine Lu Linvega's posts Post Back to profile

@wim_v12e it's kind of a wibbly wobbly category, but yeah.

A concatenative language is completely associative: you can group words within it anyhow you'd like, and maintain the same semantics. A pure functional language is referentially transparent: if two complete expressions have the same semantics, they can be interchanged without changing the program semantics. The functional language, however, requires "complete expressions"; the concatenative language doesn't.

https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/concatenative

Like 16 March at 19:56 | Open on merveilles.town

3 comments

WimⓂ️

@neauoire What does it mean to have "complete expressions"? Referential transparency refers to the names. If something is not named in an expression, it does not affect referential transparency.
Can you give an example of an expression that is incomplete, but is acceptable for in concatenative language?

16 March at 20:58 | Open on merveilles.town

Devine Lu Linvega

@wim_v12e like the difference between a lambda and a clojure, or from the tacit point of view where you don't pass assignment and how returning multiple values at once is done.

`(+ x y)`, versus `+`

16 March at 21:02 | Open on merveilles.town

WimⓂ️

@neauoire By my understanding,
`+` is a complete expression (it's a function), as is `(+ x y)` (an applied function; there is not enough context to say that the bindings are defined but that is not the same as incomplete).
Closures are functions (named or not) that capture some bindings from their outer scope.
Returning multiple values is valid in a functional language too.
I don't understand where the notion of (in)completeness fits in.

17 March at 11:24 | Open on merveilles.town