Re: Mathematica and Lisp
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg129466] Re: Mathematica and Lisp
- From: John Doty <noqsiaerospace at gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2013 01:39:23 -0500 (EST)
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On Friday, January 11, 2013 8:23:16 PM UTC-7, amzoti wrote: > It is clear the Mathematica uses Lisp as one of the example programming paradigms it pulls from and I have a general question regarding this. Perhaps not as much as you think. Mathematica is fundamentally a term rewriting system, a more general concept than the lambda calculus behind Lisp. To be sure, the easiest thing to express as term rewriting is the replacement of a function invocation by its body (as in the lambda calculus), but Mathematica can do more complex things, some rather strange from the lambda calculus point of view. Consider f_[whoCalled]^:=f Sin[whoCalled] which yields Sin Very alien to Lisp!