Re: the necessity of Lisp's Objects?

On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:35:17 +0000, Jon Harrop <usenet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:

>John Thingstad wrote:
>> But as was demonstrated the name self is only known to it self.
>> Labels has lexical scope so the name isn't ex****ted.
>
>But the name is im****ted, so the onus is on the author to ensure that the
>name "self" is not otherwise used in the body of the function. That's why
>this isn't an anonymous function but is, instead, a named function with
the
>name "self".

Now I don't understand.  You said previously 

:An interesting quirk [of Mathematica] is that the function itself
:is called #0.  So you can do recursion without having to >bind to
:a name, e.g. factorial:
:
:  If[#1==0, 1, #1 #0[#1-1]]&

So "#0" is a lexically scoped alias for the name of the function and
the programmer has to ensure that it is not otherwise used in the
body.  To me that is not anonymity.

The only difference I see vs Rob's examples and my own ... and perhaps
this is what you mean ... is that the symbol #0 is automagically bound
to the current function.  All that means to me is that there is
another reserved word I can't use as a name.

George
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