Re: [stack] are concatenative languages applicative?

John Nowak scripsit:

> What I'm interested in is this "dequotation" rule:
> 
>     [$A] i  ==  $A
> 
> In other words, these are all equivalent:
> 
>     1 2 [3 * *] i  ==  1 2 3 * *  ==  1 [2 3] i [* *] i
> 
> An important thing to note here is that this translation is just a  
> rewriting of function-level code. '$A' is a function, not a value.   

Well, yes and no.  In Joy, at least, *everything* is a value, and
every value may be applied to the stack.  So [1 2 3] is the value
"the list containing 1, 2, and 3" where 1, 2, 3, and the list itself
are just values.  Only when we apply i (which itself is just a symbol)
to a stack with [1 2 3] at the top of it are 1, 2, and 3 applied
to the rest of the stack.

This is quite different from Cat (or Scheme) where some values are
applyable and some are not.

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