Applicative languages? Anyone?

[reddy@b.cs.uiuc.edu (Uday S. Reddy)]

   >2) Some syntactic means for preventing argumentsfrom getting unreadably
   >   numerous just to pass something down to where it's finally used. 

This is an interesting issue.  I can think of two solutions right
away:

1. Package up all the arguments into a data structure (say an
association-list or an object), and then you only need to pass around
one data structure.  (A good way to implement this data structure
would be as a "frame" a la Abelson and Sussman.  I have tried earlier
to lobby for a "make-frame" primitive, like the "make-environment"
primitive, but was unsuccessful).

2. If this passing around of arguments is happening internal to a
function, use lexical scoping.  Say f is a function that needs n
arguments.  Define it as

	(define (f x1 x2 ... xn)
	   (define (local-function1) ...)
	   ...
	   (define (local-functionk) ...)
	   ...)

The arguments x1,...,xn need not be passed to every local-function.  

What is wrong with these solutios?  Perhaps there is a different
problem that you have in mind, but haven't stated precisely yet.


Uday Reddy
University of Illinois