Roger Hui wrote: > What are the problems with ? for functional programming, > other than the definitional one? Whatever functional > programming is, it would be poorer if it can not > accommodate ? (rule out Monte Carlo methods, etc.)
Note that "functional programming" can mean many different things. That said, a number of "functional programming" languages make "machine context" an explicit function argument, and then offer syntactic sugar to make it an implicit function argument. This means that it's possible to "re-run" code that is context dependent by preserving instances of this context. This is analogous to what J does with 9!:44 and 9!:45, but using explicit function arguments rather than independently manipulating machine state. Anyways, if that is the kind of functional programming that is at issue here, the important distinction is not the operations being performed, but the syntax used, and the associated formalisms. There must be some explicitly user-managed context where "nothing ever changes". -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
