Comments on: Heads and Tails in Functional Programming http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=101 simplify Wed, 31 Oct 2018 04:08:37 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: matt http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=101&cpage=1#comment-204 matt Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:50:24 +0000 http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=101#comment-204 @Fredrik and @Robert - Thanks pointing out hd and tl. If we were talking only Erlang, that would be fine, although I think in this case the pattern matching makes the code more clear. I used Erlang as the example language but I was playing around to find a syntactic way of handling the common cases in any language. Or better said, an imaginary language. Blub, if you like. <g> Shortness itself I'm not too worried about. I was thinking in more linguistic terms, where you might change a word ending a little bit and it gets a modified meaning. I think that's why the Perlish solution spoke to me. However, with all of that said, I don't tend to like symbolic crap in my code. I tolerate it in Perl because it gets me something (meaningful context), but I roll my eyes where it is used as an affectation, like in Ruby or PHP. So in short, I think this idea of mine is kind of dumb. But it's still fun to play with! @Fredrik and @Robert – Thanks pointing out hd and tl. If we were talking only Erlang, that would be fine, although I think in this case the pattern matching makes the code more clear. I used Erlang as the example language but I was playing around to find a syntactic way of handling the common cases in any language. Or better said, an imaginary language. Blub, if you like.

Shortness itself I’m not too worried about. I was thinking in more linguistic terms, where you might change a word ending a little bit and it gets a modified meaning. I think that’s why the Perlish solution spoke to me.

However, with all of that said, I don’t tend to like symbolic crap in my code. I tolerate it in Perl because it gets me something (meaningful context), but I roll my eyes where it is used as an affectation, like in Ruby or PHP.

So in short, I think this idea of mine is kind of dumb. But it’s still fun to play with!

]]> By: Robert Virding http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=101&cpage=1#comment-203 Robert Virding Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:49:01 +0000 http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=101#comment-203 There are some built-in functions for getting the head an tail of a list without pulling it apart with pattern matching, hd/1 and tl/1. So: List = [1,2,3,4], hd(List) ==> 1 tl(List) ==> [2,3,4] Also you have the module lists which contains *LOTS* of functions for working with lists. There are some built-in functions for getting the head an tail of a list without pulling it apart with pattern matching, hd/1 and tl/1. So:

List = [1,2,3,4],
hd(List) ==> 1
tl(List) ==> [2,3,4]

Also you have the module lists which contains *LOTS* of functions for working with lists.

]]> By: Fredrik http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=101&cpage=1#comment-202 Fredrik Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:25:58 +0000 http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=101#comment-202 You could always use hd(List) and tl(List). It is not a graphic notation admittedly, but almost as short. Also, it is easier to remember than $#@^ for those who have a short memory for symbols. You could always use hd(List) and tl(List). It is not a graphic notation admittedly, but almost as short. Also, it is easier to remember than $#@^ for those who have a short memory for symbols.

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