Subject: Re: gethash substring
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 25 Aug 2002 03:04:12 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3239233452681995@naggum.no>

* 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.