🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <CHIK.93Jan7114812@ss38.icot.or.jp>, chik@icot.or.jp (Takashi Chikayama) writes:
> Can somebody explain why integers cannot be the principal functor of
> non-atomic functors?  Are there any theoretical reasons?  Any
> implementational difficulties?  Or just for compatibility with
> previous implementations?
> 
> Takashi Chikayama

There is no fundamental reason why not.  Maybe it was done because
it was imagined it would make it easier to implement efficient
arithmetic.  As an example of the other approach, the LIFE language
(and a fortiori the Wild_LIFE interpreter) allows numbers (and
strings too) as main functors, since arguments may be attached to
any sort, and numbers are sorts.

Peter

In article <CHIK.93Jan14104559@ss38.icot.or.jp>, chik@icot.or.jp (Takashi Chikayama) writes:
> Thank you very much to those who responded to my question posted in
> article <CHIK.93Jan7114812@ss38.icot.or.jp>.  I'd like to thank you
> all and summarize the responses here.
> 
> My original question was:
> 
>> Can somebody explain why integers cannot be the principal functor of
>> non-atomic functors?  Are there any theoretical reasons?  Any
>> implementational difficulties?  Or just for compatibility with
>> previous implementations?
[Stuff removed]
> Thank you again to all those who responded.
> 
> Takashi Chikayama
> ICOT

A few years back I wrote a little prolog interpreter for my Commodore 64.
Now it stored atom names in a hash table.  Each entry in this table also 
had other pointers to the procedure corresponding to this name, the operator
settings etc.  Numbers were not stored in the hash table and this could
explain why some implementations don't allow numbers, since under the above
scheme there would be no way to get from the number to its procedures, or
any other useful information that had to be common to all instances of the same
number.  Anyway my interpreter did support arbitary functor names, you
could create something like f(f(a))(x, y) but you got an error if you tried
to use it in call().
-- 
Jose Marques, Systems Programmer
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