🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <26463@castle.ed.ac.uk>, jamesh@castle.ed.ac.uk (James
Hammerton) wrote:
> Nor to me, but I think that it is a bad example to use anyway. So lets
> try something to show the readability a bit better.  Consider the
> factorial function. In scheme it would be:
> 
> (define fac
>  (lambda (n)
>   ( if (= 0 n)
>     1
>     (* n (fac (- n 1))))))
> 
> Is that enough brackets?! ;-)
> 
> In SML:
> 
> fun fac 0 = 1		   [ or  fun fac n = if n=0 then 1 else n*fac(n-1); ]
> |   fac n = n * fac (n-1) ;
> 

Well, you are comparing apple and oranges :-).

Your Lisp example doesn't use pattern matching.

There are macros for lisp (like the SELECT-MATCH macro for
Common Lisp) which will implement SML style pattern matching.
The your lisp code will look very different.


Rainer Joswig
Email: joswig@informatik.uni-hamburg.de