Re: [stack] language hierarchy

On Dec 11, 2007, at 3:48 PM, Don Groves wrote:

> You're probably right on this but I'm not entirely convinced.  John  
> said
> "explicit recursion" which I take to mean calling a function from  
> within
> itself. This would seem to leave leave out 1. and 2.

To clarify, recursion is done with recursive combinators. Perhaps  
"explicit recursion" is the wrong word, but what I meant is that  
functions do not explicitly call themselves recursively; some  
combinator (linrec, binrec, etc) does it.

> Maintaining a pointer to the current enclosure should be sufficient  
> for
> self invocation.

This would hinder factoring. Below, both 'foo1' and 'foo2' should  
behave identically, but having things depend on their context as such  
would break that:

	(a b c d) :foo1 def
	(b c) :e def (a e d) :foo2 def

- John