"Rob Thorpe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Andreas Rossberg wrote: > > > No, variables are insignificant in this context. You can consider a > > language without variables at all (such languages exist, and they can > > even be Turing-complete) and still have evaluation, values, and a > > non-trivial type system. > > Hmm. You're right, ML is no-where in my definition since it has no > variables.
That's not true. ML has variables in the mathematical sense of variables -- symbols that can be associated with different values at different times. What it doesn't have is mutable variables (though it can get the effect of those by having variables be immutable references to mutable memory locations). What Andreas was alluding to was presumably FP-style languages where functions or relations are built by composing functions or relations without ever naming values. Torben -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list