Re:Arthur Whitney's One-page Interpreter (1992)
by avmich on Thursday October 30, 2014 @11:09PM
(#8537107)
The more relevant part is comparison with math notation. No whitespaces and line breaks there.
Re:Arthur Whitney's One-page Interpreter (1992)
by dragonwriter on Friday October 31, 2014 @10:30AM
(#8538911)
Actually, the usual presentation of math notation in textbooks, papers, etc., while dense, does use whitespace -- and often large whitespace or line breaks for factoring out definitions used in the main equation for readability and ready comprehension. [1] Let-bindings and similar constructs in other functional languages are, in fact, largely driven by this kind of factoring-out in mathematical notation (not just in their use of whitespace, but in general.)
[1] For an example of the large whitespace for factoring-out, see the factoring out of J-sub-k on the top of p. 460 of http://titan.fsb.hr/~venovako/dist/tensor.pdf
> a =: a + b
> instead of
> (for i=0; i<a.size(); ++i) a[i] += b[i];
Well, sure, most people prefer not to write code with syntax errors.
But, nitpicks aside, your post is mostly frequently-made commentary in favor of functional programming (both FP languages and functional style -- which, again, has nothing to do with avoiding line breaks or whitespace -- in other languages), but really has nothing to do with the characterization uphtread of the mass of minimally-whitespace, non-line-broken C code presented upthread as being a matter of "functional vs. imperative", which remains completely wrong. So its a complete nonsequitur to the post it "responds" to.
Not using whitespace, including line breaks, has nothing to do with functional style, and using it has nothing to do with imperative style. (If it did, your C++ example, minus the syntax error, would be just as "functional" as the J example.)