Re: [stack] What does "concatenative" actually mean?

John Cowan <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.lang.concatenative
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Robbert Dalen scripsit:

> i do think that you are right that you can run into problems if you  
> make (the possibly evaluation) of an expression *observable*.
> this is only problematic with 'open' joy quotations, for instance:

Joy terms consisting of a sequence of expressions in brackets are not
necessarily quotations.  They are simply lists, Joy's only general-purpose
data structure (it has strings and sets of very small integers as well,
but the last are hardly used).  A quotation is simply a particular
application of a list.

Modern Lisps have had to back off from the similar dual interpretation of
lists as data and code, because of the variable binding issues involved.
Concatenative languages don't have that problem, so code/data duality
remains.  But even in Joy, most lists aren't (useful) code at all.

-- 
Take two turkeys, one goose, four               John Cowan
cabbages, but no duck, and mix them             http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
together. After one taste, you'll duck          [email protected]
soup the rest of your life.
        --Groucho
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