Re: Can a functional language be sequential?

["Michael St . Hippolyte" <address@hidden>]

On 2003.06.02 10:41 John Clements wrote:
> 
> Typically, "sequences" are given the meaning "evaluate all of these, then 
> return the value of the last one."  In such a situation, in a language with 
> no side effects, there would be no reason to have such a construct, because 
> evaluating expressions other than the last one would have no effect on the 
> computation (aside from non-termination and errors).  I'm guessing that your 
> sequences of definitions and constructors actually mutate some global 
> namespace.  Perhaps the real question is what you consider to be "mutation".

In Bento, a sequence means "evaluate all of these; if there are more than
one, concatenate the values in sequence; return the resulting value".  I
don't believe there's any way in Bento to mutate the global namespace (except
maybe for modifying the source code and restarting the interpreter).

Michael

-----------------------------
Michael St. Hippolyte
http://www.bentodev.org