Lambda Lists Demo

[ttthttpd]

Isn't this just a macro system?

[thequux]

Looks interesting... just one question: how does your language handle this?

let (foo ?a) => (id 1)

let (?a bar) => (id 2)

(foo bar)

[SturmDarkblade]

I gave it a bit of thought, but I couldn't think of any good way to hash them correctly. So I just go through the list of functions from the top to the bottom. So the one that is defined first will be the one that is evaluated.

[Disprofuse]

Good fun! I am actually not sure this kind of "power" is useful or more useful than normal macros but it is fun to invent esolangs. I actually had a very similar idea to this with patterns rather than functions or variables. But my syntax was rather awkward:

yours:let (foo ?a) = (bar ?a)

mine:foo x1 means bar x1

I was going for making a language that was essentially English, and grammatical. But it is impractical for when you pass a "function" another function the English becomes meaningless.

[SturmDarkblade]

With pattern matching, one could easily define a crude english-like language. For example:

let (if ?a then ?b else ?c) => (if ?a ?b ?c)

or a 'english map' like:

let (map the pattern ?a across the list ?b) => (map ?a ?b)

To make the english make sense in a larger context, you could define specialized pattern such as:

let (?a and then reverse) => (reverse ?a)

So you could write stuff as:

((map the pattern double across the list (test scores)) and then reverse)

Almost english ;-)