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Functional Programming: Functional Programming Languages
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This article is ... available as a TechRepublic download.F# (pronounced F Sharp) is a functional programming language based upon OCaml. It was developed by Microsoft's Microsoft Research department. Tags: Microsoft Visual Studio, Integer, Microsoft .NET, Programming Language, Functional Programming, Programming, Justin James Blog posts 2007-06-08
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Functional programming languages allow the application of functions to data in agregate rather than being forced to deal with data on an item by item basis. Such applications are free of assignments and independent of evaluation order and provide a mechanism to operate on entire data structures which is an ideal paradigm for parallel computing.
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[N]othing is seemingly being done in the other direction -- to add functional programming capabilities to XSLT. The citation in the start of this section reflects the unanimous, dominating understanding of XSLT as a declarative-only programming language, which does not belong to the family of FP languages, due to its lack of support for higher order functions.
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A brief introduction to functional programming is given using the J programming language for examples. Several examples show the expressive power of functional languages and their application to topics in mathematics. Use of the J language as a substitute for mathematical notation is discussed.
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A powerful mechanism sometimes used in functional programming is the notion of higher-order functions. That is, functions that can take functions as arguments, and/or return functions as results. Higher-order functions have been studied long before the notion of functional programming existed, in the lambda calculus, a formalism which has influenced the design of several functional programming languages.
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Unlike imperative or procedural programming languages, in which computation is typically performed by altering program state, functional programming languages operate on the principles of mathematical evaluation and reduction. Such programming languages are deeply rooted in formal mathematical logic and computational theory. Functional programming languages are largely based on the system of lambda calculus devised by Alonzo Church, in which numerical values, sequences, data structures, basic mathematical computations, and even recursion can be expressed entirely with nested functions.
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Functional Programming Languages