Frank Barknecht wrote:
Hallo, IOhannes m zmoelnig hat gesagt: // IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
basically because it is like it is. i guess that if someone (not completely naive; and with an eye on
language-design and not just tool-design) would go and re-invent the
wheel, they would make lists just lists. without any special "selector"
(just the first element of the list).But if you drop the current selectors and use the first element of any list as selector, you just have reinvented selectors, haven't you? ;)
no. or yes, but selectors need not be symbols, and there would be no special selectors, that implictely define the tail of the list.
somehow functional languages like lisp manage to do well with lists and dealing the head of a list (selector) in various special ways without making the head be different from the elements of the tail.
fgmadsr IOhannes