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2.8 Functional and Imperative Programming

Scheme supports a functional style of programming (when you restrict use of procedures which alter already existent object, such as set-car!, set-cdr!, vector-set!, vector-fill!, etc.) as well as an imperative style of programming when the above mentioned procedures are used. J is a functional notation where the model of computation consists of application of functions to arguments without side effects (roll and deal have side effects; pseudo random state is modified). Once an item is created in memory it is never modified; functions may be applied to such items producing new items. Functional composition is the primary model for computation.


next up previous
Next: 2.9 Exact and Inexact Up: 2 Criteria Previous: 2.7.1 Procedural Abstraction using
2002-09-27