From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!uio.no!news-feed.ifi.uio.no!ifi.uio.no!not-for-mail From: Erik Naggum Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: gethash substring Date: 25 Aug 2002 03:04:12 +0000 Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 22 Message-ID: <3239233452681995@naggum.no> References: <2hbs7we3gq.fsf@vserver.cs.uit.no> <2hwuqkcjah.fsf@vserver.cs.uit.no> <8765xz64b5.fsf@cs.uga.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: maud.ifi.uio.no 1030244652 17452 129.240.64.16 (25 Aug 2002 03:04:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@ifi.uio.no NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Aug 2002 03:04:12 GMT Mail-Copies-To: never User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:38696 * Pierpaolo BERNARDI | If you are using hash-tables you are not doing functional programming | anyway. * Ed L Cashin | Why not? Could you elaborate? If functions can return numbers then | why not hash tables? The hash table operations do not return a new hashtable with the specified changes made and retain the old value. Quite contrary, the whole point is to modify the state of an existing object. This is a side effect and is not thus sufficiently functional. (When functional programming languages support I/O, I see little point in arguing about such things, as they have already proved that at least the side effect of changing the state of some I/O stream is allowable, but for some reason, the functional programming paradigm has not been shot down as fundamentally silly in its excesses.) -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.