Re: [stack] sweetening concatenative syntax

On Mar 8, 2008, at 19:31 , [email protected] wrote:

>> I'm one of the confused. You said your lambda code was objectively
>> superior and challenged me to write concatenative code. I did, and
>> then produced objective measures for my code's acceptability  
>> (function
>> count, token count, linearity, and smooth left-to-right reading). You
>> *apparently* responded by claiming that those somehow applied to your
>> notation too because your notation could be translated to mine.
>>
>> If that's not what you meant, cool; but what DID you mean?
>
> I meant that it could be reasoned about as easily as the pointfree  
> version
> as there would be a well-defined translation. That's what I meant by
> saying you get the best of both worlds; the worlds were "simple
> concatenative semantics" and "lexically scope variables".
>
>> Read Baker's discussion -- he admits that this is a special case with
>> "relaxed" rules. It's admittedly not "strictly" linear (his words).
>
> I obviously have to re-read it! It's been awhile.
>
>> Your code doesn't even meet that special case; it's nonlinear in 'f',
>> which appears twice sequentially.
>
> In the program that results from my code, all values are referenced  
> once
> (due to implicit copying). Values can be mutated without visible side
> effects. No garbage collection is needed. In seems that it offers  
> all of
> the same benefits as Baker's Linear Lisp, does it not?
>
> If it does offer the same benefits, then why is not linear? Is it  
> because
> all copying is not explicit? If that's the case, do macros make a  
> language
> non-linear because they can compile down to code that calls dup? If  
> macros
> do not make a language non-linear, then why do lambda expressions  
> make it
> non-linear if lambda expressions are just macros?

My version of dup makes an explicit copy automatically.  Does that
solve the problem?
--
don




> It seems to me that you're saying the addition of macros makes a  
> language
> non-linear. Perhaps Baker was simply not precise enough in his  
> definition?
> Perhaps I'm way off somehow?
>
> - John
>
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