> 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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