functional programming

[Jason Stokes]

Michal Wallace (sabren) wrote in message ...
>On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Moshe Zadka wrote:
>
>> Functional programming has a very clear definition: no side
>> effects. Iterating explicitly means "with side effects."

That's what they'll have you believe!

Actually "functional" styles of programming are a fuzzier set than that.
There are the "pure functional" languages like Haskell that are based on
lambda calculus, and prohibit all side effects.  But there are also "impure"
languages such as Lisp and Erlang which offer functional features, but mix
it up with procedural styles of programming.

Functional programming, at a bare minimum, means this: the ability to use
functions as first class objects, to pass functions as arguments to other
functions and to return functions as results of a function call.