Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme

[David Mertz]

|mertz at gnosis.cx (David Mertz) writes:
|> |a function NEEDS a name in order to call itself recursively
|> Nope.  That's the point of the Y combinator; you don't need a name to do
|> this (just first class anonymous functions).

Ray Blaak <rAYblaaK at STRIPCAPStelus.net> wrote previously:
|Actually you do need a name. The Y combinator is just a way to give a name to
|the anonymous function, where the name is a parameter name. It is only with
|that name that the recursive invocation is done.

Well, OK.  This is true.  But the context was basically whether you
could write whole programs as big lambda abstractions--e.g.  Lisp minus
'defun' and 'set', or Python minus 'def'.

"Normal" recursive programs let the programmer know the name of the
function she is writing, and use that name for the recursion call.  You
could use the Y combinator even if pixies would come it at random and
change the bound name 'h' to something else, throughout your code; the
name itself is never -used- beyond the lambda.

Yours, David...

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