The Theory of Concatenative Combinators | Hacker News Reader

The Theory of Concatenative Combinators

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3 pointsvmorgulis5 comments

This sounds like stack based LISP as opposed to "list" based "LIS"P

Yes a bit but stack operators have always an "ary". Lisp works on "n".

Could you unpack that a bit? You're talking about arity? What's the distinction you're making?

The combinators (operators on the stack) are often limited to 1, 2 or 3 parameters picked on the top of the stack.

In Lisp you can write (+ 1 2 3 ... n).

With a stack-based language, you might write:

    1 //push 1
    2 //...
    3 
    + //add 3,2 and push 5
    + //add 5,1 and push 6

I see. Intuitively I would guess that makes a lisp more powerful.