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Re: Scheme learning
From: |
Hans Åberg |
Subject: |
Re: Scheme learning |
Date: |
Mon, 28 May 2018 22:55:59 +0200 |
> On 28 May 2018, at 21:47, Robert Schmaus <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> I agree with you - when I looked at the Scheme functions (mainly as Snippets)
> I saw that it's not very complicated. It was just when I tried to customise
> something that I really had to do a lot of guesswork how to get this to work.
> Does this expression return something or not? What does "lambda" mean, why
> does this expression need a context and where do I get it from?
The lambda comes from the book by Alonzo Church, "The Calculi of
Lambda-conversion", which is a logic theory about function applications, but it
is unknown why he choose the letter lambda, though a prefix notation makes it
easier to carry out formal proofs. It then caught on in the computer community.
Instead of a prefix lambda notation, one can use the infix "mapsto" notation,
and there are some examples here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus