Though I agree it's probably best not to mention the phrase "Church encoding" to beginning students.
Be reassured, that was not my intention ^^. I just pointed that out to support the fact that foldr was *the* fundamental folding operator for lists. 2012/5/24 Brent Yorgey <byorgey@seas.upenn.edu>
On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 09:24:06AM +0200, Ertugrul Söylemez wrote:
Yves Parès <yves.pares@gmail.com> wrote:
Note about []: Don't even mention foldl. The folding combinator for lists is foldr, period.
Yes, I do agree. I came to this when I realized foldr gave the church encoding of a list.
Not only that. The foldr combinator has an identity fold and implements actual structural recursion.
That's pretty much what a Church encoding is. Though I agree it's probably best not to mention the phrase "Church encoding" to beginning students.
-Brent
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