Re: [stack] initial stab at a wikipedia entry

That's a very nice entry; it gives a good survey.

I'm not sure how useful the link to "applicative" is, mainly because
the article linked to is sadly non-descriptive. But that's not our
fault.

"Concatenative languages are necessarily point-free as allowing terms
to denote variables would violate the rule that all terms denote
functions."

Not true -- a variable can be modeled (loosely) as an implicit
function of time. Forth provides local and global variables; locals
seem to make a language less concatenative, while globals don't hinder
it so much. (Naturally, globals have other problems.)

This should probably be written as saying that concatenative
languages, like other data-flow languages (whoops! we should mention
near the top that concatenative languages ARE dataflow languages),
encourage a point-free style.

I'm also thinking about expanding the point about monoids a bit. We
have a little to be said on that issue that can't be said on the page
about monoids.

-Wm


On 1/2/09, John Nowak <[email protected]> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:John_Nowak/Sandbox/Concatenative
>
> I'm sure it needs more work. Any input would be appreciated (or just
> go ahead and edit it).
>
> - John
>
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