On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 3:40 PM, Jon Zeppieri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 5:59 PM, Peter Michaux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 12:11 PM, Jon Zeppieri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>> I imagine the appeal of arguments.callee comes from the fact that it
>>> allows programmers to rename functions without having to change
>>> recursive calls within the body of the function.
>>
>> It makes recursive calls inside anonymous functions possible.
>
> No. See "fixpoint combinator."
I was thinking about that in particular and thinking that
arguments.callee makes a complex concept like fixpoint combinator
something that is very easy to understand and use.
> But that's a somewhat flippant response. More to the point: if you
> want recursion, one way or another, you need to be able to refer to
> the function in question. 'arguments.callee' allows you to refer to
> it but violates the Tennent Correspondence.
Isn't Tennent Correspondence completely shot anyway in ECMAScript?
> So, given that you can
> either refer to the function this way:
>
> var foo = bar() { ... bar ...}
>
> or this way:
>
> function bar() { ... arguments.callee ... }
>
> ... it's not clear to me what advantage the latter has over the former
> (IE bugs aside, that is). Anonymity itself doesn't seem to be a
> virtue.
There is a large advantage in keeping code bulk down. There have been
times that I've marveled at the utility of arguments.callee. Sometimes
the variable that refers to a function value will be reassigned,
arguments.callee just keeps working but your first example above
breaks.
Peter
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