UnlambdaUnlambda is a minimal, "nearly pure" functional programming language invented by David Madore. It is based on combinatory logic, an expression system without the lambda operator or free variables. It relies mainly on two built-in functions (s and k) and an apply operator (written `, the backquote character). These alone make it Turing-complete, but there are also some input/output (I/O) functions to enable interacting with the user, some shortcut functions, and a lazy evaluation function. Variables are unsupported.
Reification (computer science)Reification is the process by which an abstract idea about a computer program is turned into an explicit data model or other object created in a programming language. A computable/addressable object—a resource—is created in a system as a proxy for a non computable/addressable object. By means of reification, something that was previously implicit, unexpressed, and possibly inexpressible is explicitly formulated and made available to conceptual (logical or computational) manipulation.
GotoGoto (goto, GOTO, GO TO, GoTo, or other case combinations, depending on the programming language) is a statement found in many computer programming languages. It performs a one-way transfer of control to another line of code; in contrast a function call normally returns control. The jumped-to locations are usually identified using labels, though some languages use line numbers. At the machine code level, a goto is a form of branch or jump statement, in some cases combined with a stack adjustment.
CoroutineCoroutines are computer program components that allow execution to be suspended and resumed, generalizing subroutines for cooperative multitasking. Coroutines are well-suited for implementing familiar program components such as cooperative tasks, exceptions, event loops, iterators, infinite lists and pipes. They have been described as "functions whose execution you can pause". Melvin Conway coined the term coroutine in 1958 when he applied it to the construction of an assembly program.
First-class citizenIn a given programming language design, a first-class citizen is an entity which supports all the operations generally available to other entities. These operations typically include being passed as an argument, returned from a function, and assigned to a variable. The concept of first- and second-class objects was introduced by Christopher Strachey in the 1960s. He did not actually define the term strictly, but contrasted real numbers and procedures in ALGOL: First and second class objects.
Icon (programming language)Icon is a very high-level programming language based on the concept of "goal-directed execution" in which code returns a "success" along with valid values, or a "failure", indicating that there is no valid data to return. The success and failure of a given block of code is used to direct further processing, whereas conventional languages would typically use boolean logic written by the programmer to achieve the same ends. Because the logic for basic control structures is often implicit in Icon, common tasks can be completed with less explicit code.
Racket (programming language)Racket is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language and a multi-platform distribution that includes the Racket language, compiler, large standard library, IDE, development tools, and a set of additional languages including Typed Racket (a sister language of Racket with a static type-checker), Swindle, FrTime, Lazy Racket, R5RS & R6RS Scheme, Scribble, Datalog, Racklog, Algol 60 and several teaching languages. The Racket language is a modern dialect of Lisp and a descendant of Scheme.
Call-with-current-continuationIn the Scheme computer programming language, the procedure call-with-current-continuation, abbreviated call/cc, is used as a control flow operator. It has been adopted by several other programming languages. Taking a function f as its only argument, (call/cc f) within an expression is applied to the current continuation of the expression. For example ((call/cc f) e2) is equivalent to applying f to the current continuation of the expression.
Actor modelThe actor model in computer science is a mathematical model of concurrent computation that treats an actor as the basic building block of concurrent computation. In response to a message it receives, an actor can: make local decisions, create more actors, send more messages, and determine how to respond to the next message received. Actors may modify their own private state, but can only affect each other indirectly through messaging (removing the need for lock-based synchronization). The actor model originated in 1973.
Call stackIn computer science, a call stack is a stack data structure that stores information about the active subroutines of a computer program. This kind of stack is also known as an execution stack, program stack, control stack, run-time stack, or machine stack, and is often shortened to just "the stack". Although maintenance of the call stack is important for the proper functioning of most software, the details are normally hidden and automatic in high-level programming languages.
Chicken (Scheme implementation)Chicken (stylized as CHICKEN) is a programming language, specifically a compiler and interpreter which implement a dialect of the programming language Scheme, and which compiles Scheme source code to standard C. It is mostly R5RS compliant and offers many extensions to the standard. The newer R7RS standard is supported through an extension library. Chicken is free and open-source software available under a BSD license. It is implemented mostly in Scheme, with some parts in C for performance or to make embedding into C programs easier.
Generator (computer programming)In computer science, a generator is a routine that can be used to control the iteration behaviour of a loop. All generators are also iterators. A generator is very similar to a function that returns an array, in that a generator has parameters, can be called, and generates a sequence of values. However, instead of building an array containing all the values and returning them all at once, a generator yields the values one at a time, which requires less memory and allows the caller to get started processing the first few values immediately.
Continuation-passing styleIn functional programming, continuation-passing style (CPS) is a style of programming in which control is passed explicitly in the form of a continuation. This is contrasted with direct style, which is the usual style of programming. Gerald Jay Sussman and Guy L. Steele, Jr. coined the phrase in AI Memo 349 (1975), which sets out the first version of the Scheme programming language. John C. Reynolds gives a detailed account of the numerous discoveries of continuations.
Scheme (programming language)Scheme is a dialect of the Lisp family of programming languages. Scheme was created during the 1970s at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT AI Lab) and released by its developers, Guy L. Steele and Gerald Jay Sussman, via a series of memos now known as the Lambda Papers. It was the first dialect of Lisp to choose lexical scope and the first to require implementations to perform tail-call optimization, giving stronger support for functional programming and associated techniques such as recursive algorithms.
Lua (programming language)Lua (ˈluːə ; from lua ˈlu(w)ɐ meaning moon) is a lightweight, high-level, multi-paradigm programming language designed primarily for embedded use in applications. Lua is cross-platform, since the interpreter of compiled bytecode is written in ANSI C, and Lua has a relatively simple C API to embed it into applications. Lua originated in 1993 as a language for extending software applications to meet the increasing demand for customization at the time.
Programming language theoryProgramming language theory (PLT) is a branch of computer science that deals with the design, implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification of formal languages known as programming languages. Programming language theory is closely related to other fields including mathematics, software engineering, and linguistics. There are a number of academic conferences and journals in the area. History of programming languages and Programming language#History In some ways, the history of programming language theory predates even the development of programming languages themselves.
Tail callIn computer science, a tail call is a subroutine call performed as the final action of a procedure. If the target of a tail is the same subroutine, the subroutine is said to be tail recursive, which is a special case of direct recursion. Tail recursion (or tail-end recursion) is particularly useful, and is often easy to optimize in implementations. Tail calls can be implemented without adding a new stack frame to the call stack.
Delimited continuationIn programming languages, a delimited continuation, composable continuation or partial continuation, is a "slice" of a continuation frame that has been reified into a function. Unlike regular continuations, delimited continuations return a value, and thus may be reused and composed. Control delimiters, the basis of delimited continuations, were introduced by Matthias Felleisen in 1988 though early allusions to composable and delimited continuations can be found in Carolyn Talcott's Stanford 1984 dissertation, Felleisen et al.
Scala (programming language)Scala (ˈskɑːlə ) is a strong statically typed high-level general-purpose programming language that supports both object-oriented programming and functional programming. Designed to be concise, many of Scala's design decisions are aimed to address criticisms of Java. Scala source code can be compiled to Java bytecode and run on a Java virtual machine (JVM). Scala can also be compiled to JavaScript to run in a browser, or directly to a native executable.
Green threadIn computer programming, a green thread (virtual thread) is a thread that is scheduled by a runtime library or virtual machine (VM) instead of natively by the underlying operating system (OS). Green threads emulate multithreaded environments without relying on any native OS abilities, and they are managed in user space instead of kernel space, enabling them to work in environments that do not have native thread support. Green threads refers to the name of the original thread library for the programming language Java (that was released in version 1.
