Trying to remember ....

#1 05-02-2007, 04:55 AM

I was talking to a friend earlier today, and we ended up talking about
s-expressions, scheme, lisp etc.

I remember reading in a book, a few years ago, that the basic
operations of scheme and lisp could be reduced to a very small (four
or so) basic operators. These were represented as single letters (in
capitals). I distinctly remember this as I wrote a simple (non-lambda)
s-expression parser in Java about the same time.

For the life of me I cannot remember what these letters were or what
operations they represented. Google has failed me, and as for the book
- its somewhere in the deepest regions of my parents' garage.

Could anyone please help me rediscover this info ?

#2 05-02-2007, 05:08 AM

oPless writes:

> I remember reading in a book, a few years ago, that the basic
> operations of scheme and lisp could be reduced to a very small (four
> or so) basic operators. These were represented as single letters (in
> capitals). I distinctly remember this as I wrote a simple

You may be thinking of S and K, which together with I are four or so.
The keyword for search is "combinatory logic", though I suspect that
"lambda calculus" would also lead there. See:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatory_logic>

#3 05-02-2007, 05:58 AM

On May 2, 10:08 am, Jussi Piitulainen <jpiit...@ling.helsinki.fi>
wrote:
> oPless writes:
> > I remember reading in a book, a few years ago, that the basic
> > operations of scheme and lisp could be reduced to a very small
[snip]
> You may be thinking of S and K, which together with I are four or so.
> The keyword for search is "combinatory logic", though I suspect that
> "lambda calculus" would also lead there. See:
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatory_logic>

Fabulous! Many Thanks.

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