Re: [stack] the concatenative wikipedia article

i do agree with john (nowak) that - if concatenativity is defined to
be purely syntactic - it would include too many (non-interesting)
languages.

however, the syntactic standpoint does *exclude* a whole bunch of
useful languages such as c(++), java, haskell,etc, that are not
concatenative.

also, john's latest definition on wikipedia:

'A concatenative language is a non-applicative programming language in
which all terms denote functions and the juxtaposition of functions
denotes function composition......

.. would rule out enchilada (www.enchiladacode.nl) to be concatenative because:

- not all terms in enchilada are functions
- therefor, the juxtaposition of functions doesn't always denotes
function composition

and what about forth? surely, we don't want forth to be excluded!

- robbert

On 1/2/09, Stevan Apter <[email protected]> wrote:
> i've stayed out of this wrangle.  i've fallen into the habit of
> using/interpreting "concatenative" to mean nothing more than
> "joy-like."  if someone claims that L is concatenative, and L
> doesn't look like joy, then i look for an argument which connects
> L in some non-obvious way with joy.
>
> but now i think that robbert is correct.  "concatenative" is
> purely syntactic, and picks out just those languages where
> concatenation is used to make wfes from wfes.  at any rate,
> that seems to match my "pre-theoretical" use of the term.
>
> and that reminds me:  robbert, can we have a status update on
> enchilada?