Mailing List Archive: 49091 messages
  • Home
  • Script library
  • AltME Archive
  • Mailing list
  • Articles Index
  • Site search
 

[REBOL] More on expressions

From: joel::neely::fedex::com at: 1-Feb-2003 10:21

Inspired by the discussions of ANY and ALL, I thought I'd share this little puzzle, prefaced with a tad of background. Some languages are described as "imperative" or "procedural" because the programmer is writing commands to be obeyed. PASCAL, COBOL, FORTRAN, and (the way most published code appears) C come to mind. Other languages are designated as "functional" because the programmer is defining functions whose (side-effect-free) evaluation yields the desired result. SCHEME, ML, and HASKELL come to mind. I think of REBOL as a hybrid which I'll call "expressional" because we write expressions to be evaluated, but often the (side-)effect of those evaluations is the goal. For instance APPEND has both a resulting value and an effect; sometimes we want one, or the other, or both. Thinking clearly about what our expressions can do for us is a very stimulating way to explore the power of programming concepts. Here is a little puzzle along that vein. GIVEN: Three variables, A, B, and C which we'll assume have been set to numeric values. CHALLENGE: Write an expression whose value is the median of the values. A trival (but time-consuming) solution is second sort reduce [a b c] since the median of a set of values is "the one in the middle if they are in order". CONSTRAINT: Just to make it iteresting ;-) the expression MAY NOT use any of these REBOL words/functions: sort if either first second third nor any path expressions. The trick, of course, is to find an expression that eliminates the need for any explicit "decision" or "selection" activity. Have fun! -jn-