Python for philosophers

[rusi]

On May 12, 9:22 am, rusi <rustompm... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 12, 3:16 am, alex23 <wuwe... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 12 May, 06:10, Mark Janssen <dreamingforw... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Wow.  You must be from another planet.  Find Socrates if you wish to
> > > know these things.  He's from there also.
>
> > Now now, there's no need for a turf war, there's plenty of room on
> > this list for crazies.
>
> I'm reminded of this:
>
> Conversation between inmate and attendant in an asylum
>
> Inmate: I am Napoleon
> Attendant: Yes of course. But how did you know that?
> Inmate: God himself told me s…
> [Loud voice from another corner] I told you no such thing!

I have on occasion expressed that newcomers to this list should be
treated with more gentleness than others.
And since my own joking may be taken amiss, let me hasten to add (to
the OP -- Citizen Kant)

What you are looking for is more in line with what is called
'rewriting systems'
And the shortening you talk of is usually called 'canonical form' or
'normal form'

Python is closer to such than traditional imperative/OO languages like
C/C++/Java, though other languages -- usually called 'functional
language' are generally closer to this ideal.

The most mainstream of these today is probably 'Haskell'
For your purposes however you may want to look at functional languages
that are more explicitly based on rewriting such as 'Pure' (earlier
'Q')

For last http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_%28programming_language%29

For rest: Ive tried to put into quotes things that could he helpful
starting points for search engine research