First-class function: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:19, 26 July 2006

Revision as of 20:22, 31 July 2006

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Languages which are strongly associated with functional programming, such as [[Lisp programming language|Lisp]], [[Scheme programming language|Scheme]], [[ML programming language|ML]], and [[Haskell programming language|Haskell]], all support first-class functions. Other languages which also support them include [[Python programming language|Python]], [[ECMAScript]] ([[JavaScript]]), [[Lua programming language|Lua]], [[Ruby programming language|Ruby]] and [[Scala programming language|Scala]]. Also [[Perl]] supports first-class functions (passed using references to them).

AllMost modern compiled programming languages support functions defined statically at compile time. [[C programming language|C]] additionally supports function pointers, which can be stored in data structures and passed as arguments to other functions. Nevertheless, C is not considered to support first class functions, since in general functions cannot be created dynamically during the execution of a program. The closest analog in C is that of a dynamically compiled function created by a [[just-in-time compiler]], which is compiled as an array of [[machine language]] instructions in memory and then cast to a function pointer. However, this technique is specific to the underlying hardware architecture and is therefore neither general nor portable.

==See also==