On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Stefano Lanzavecchia wrote:
> In case you missed this in comp.lang.functional:
Thank you, Stefano. Yes, I missed it.
> "Mattias Waldau" <mattias@...> wrote in message
> news:<m31yoft8i2.fsf@...>...
Sorry, Mattias. I missed it, so here is my reply:
> > manfred@... (Manfred Von Thun) writes:
> > > I am pleased to announce John Cowan's substantial enhancements to
> > > the prototype C implementation of Joy, a purely functional language.
> >
> > I looked at it, and had some questions.
> >
> > Please shortly explain:
> > 1. How does it differ from FORTH?
In many many ways. Whereas Forth exposes much of the underlying
implementation, Joy hides most of it. Whereas Forth is similar
to an assembler + some high level constructs, Joy is only high
level.
> > 2. How is it functional? Is it it FORTH without variables?
It is like the purely functional subset of Lisp, Scheme, ML, or
like Haskell (which is purely functional all the way). Indeed,
there are no assignment statements, no assignable variables.
There are not even any formal parameters that are given values
at the point of call, and in this respect it resembles (some style
of programming in) Forth. But no, it is not Forth without variables,
it is too different.
> > 3. Is it typed?
Only weakly and dynamically, like Lisp and Scheme, and unlike
ML and Haskell which have polymorphic typing at compile time.
> > Mattias Waldau, http://www.abc.se/~m10217/
Hope this helps, Mattias.
- Manfred