Re: [xsl] Functional programming in XSLT (revised)

[Alexey Gokhberg <alexei at bluewin dot ch>]

Michael Kay wrote:
> 
> Alexey:
> > > The <fxsl:function> declarations are allowed at any place, where
> > > <xsl:variable> declarations are allowed. In particular, function
> > > declarations can be top-level or local to a template.
> >
> Jeni:
> > I was thinking about this after reading your last proposal - local
> > function declarations in the same way as you get local variables.  I
> > quite like it (it has a symmetry) but I couldn't think of why I'd ever
> > need it.
> >
> 
> If you'd never used a language with local variables, you'd wonder why you
> ever need them. Once you've used a language with local functions, you spend
> the rest of your life cursing languages that only offer global functions.
> 
> Having said that, I made saxon:function available at the top-level only,
> because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life explaining the concept of
> local functions, and juistifying why they should have access to local
> variables declared outside the function body.
> 
> Mike Kay
> Software AG

Take it easy.

Long ago, in the dark ages, I was involved in implementing a LISP
interpreter. Of course, I told to all my FORTRAN-using friends, how
wonderful are embedded functions with local variables, and why the
normal programming is not possible without them.

Just a bit later I started with C language, and I told to all my
PASCAL-using friends how useless are those embedded functions with local
variables, and why ...

All that, however, did not make me unhappy for the rest of my life.

Alexey Gokhberg

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