On Thursday 26 July 2007, Harald ROTTER wrote:
Hi,
I read about the usage of "fix" to define recursive functions. Although I think that I understood how to use "fix", I still wonder what the advantages of "fix" are (as compared to the "conventional" approach to define recursive functions).
As others have said, it allows you to define anonymous recursive functions (not necessarily small!). FPers have traditionally advocated using lots of small, named, top-level functions, but I think it's amazing how much more readable code becomes when some of those single-use functions are inlined. You can't inline a recursive function, but you can inline an application of fix. Jonathan Cast http://sourceforge.net/projects/fid-core http://sourceforge.net/projects/fid-emacs