Re:An Overview of the Starlark Language
by vlovich123 on Thursday June 06, 2024 @02:36PM
(#40600819)
> is that you don't know what kind of programs your users are writing
Except we have lots of easily accessible OSS code available via GitHub/GitLab etc in addition to self-reporting from closed repos. Can you find any instance of an omega combinator in use? I'm not even sure omega combinator is relevant to Starlark given that Starlark is a more limited language derived from Python. For example, it doesn't typically allow for recursion which I believe would be required to express an Omega combinator within it. Yes I know the definition of the combinator says it's not recursive, but that's in a pure CS sense. In a practical sense, there's not much difference between a function being passed itself as an argument and then invoking it vs invoking itself directly, particularly from an enforcement perspective. Indeed, you can verify it'll fail the recursion prevention code in Starlark [1]
Except we have lots of easily accessible OSS code available via GitHub/GitLab etc in addition to self-reporting from closed repos. Can you find any instance of an omega combinator in use? I'm not even sure omega combinator is relevant to Starlark given that Starlark is a more limited language derived from Python. For example, it doesn't typically allow for recursion which I believe would be required to express an Omega combinator within it. Yes I know the definition of the combinator says it's not recursive, but that's in a pure CS sense. In a practical sense, there's not much difference between a function being passed itself as an argument and then invoking it vs invoking itself directly, particularly from an enforcement perspective. Indeed, you can verify it'll fail the recursion prevention code in Starlark [1]
[1] https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/blob/e1a73e6e89a082e3d80...