On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 4:18 PM, Pal Engstad <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It seems to me that you are confusing the rather abstract “application” from
> functional languages and what I call a  (function) “call”.

I also proposed using "application" vs. "call". There's nothing
technically wrong with calling a "call" an "application", but it may
be confusing to use "application" for multiple kinds of function type
in the same discussion.

> Would it perhaps be better to use [] brackets to indicate C-like calls. In
> other words:
>
> f [a b] is a call to a function f by two arguments.

I could go with that.

> f a b simply means the application of f, a and b. It could mean either
>
> 1)      f [a b], or
>
> 2)      f [a] [b] ó (f [a]) [b], or
>
> 3)      any eta-expansion of the application (the eta-expansion rule is [\x
> . f x ó f]).

I don't think we should be using an arity-abstract application
notation until we also say how the type system is going to handle it.

> Applications do not have arity. Calls do have arity. We can only talk about
> arity when an application has been translated to a number of calls.

Well, if "application" is different from "call", then we should wait
till we get to it to talk about whether it has a notion of arity.

> Does this help?

Probably, at least a little. Thanks.
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