Harmon Nine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Why is "unit" (as opposed to, say, "frozboz") the non-descript value to bind a > variable to when any atom would do? Is there a history behind this, e.g. was > it taken from another language?
In type theory, unit denotes the type inhabited by only one value. Normally, the value of this type is written () (the empty tuple), but still pronounced "unit". Unit does not carry any information, and hence is the canonical argument, resp. result type for functions that don't require, resp. return any information (as opposed to void, which denotes the type with no value, and hence would describe a function that can never be called, or resp. does never return - of course, some well-known languages get this completely wrong). - Andreas _________________________________________________________________________________ mozart-users mailing list [email protected] http://www.mozart-oz.org/mailman/listinfo/mozart-users
