The function of FUNCTION in LISP or why the FUNARG problem should be called the environment problem
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
TL;DR
A problem common to many powerful programming languages arises when one has to determine what values to assign to free variables in functions and the argument is tried to couch the argument in ALGOL-like terms as much as possible.
Abstract
A problem common to many powerful programming languages arises when one has to determine what values to assign to free variables in functions. Different implementational approaches which attempt to solve the problem are considered. The discussion concentrates on LISP implementations and points out why most current LISP systems are not as general as the original LISP 1.5 system. Readers not familiar with LISP should be able to read this paper without difficulty since we have tried to couch the argument in ALGOL-like terms as much as possible.