this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
3 points (100.0% liked)

Concatenative Programming

168 readers
1 users here now

Hello!

This space is for sharing news, experiences, announcements, questions, showcases, etc. regarding concatenative programming concepts and tools.

We'll also take any programming described as:

From Wikipedia:

A concatenative programming language is a point-free computer programming language in which all expressions denote functions, and the juxtaposition of expressions denotes function composition. Concatenative programming replaces function application, which is common in other programming styles, with function composition as the default way to build subroutines.

For example, a sequence of operations in an applicative language like the following:

y = foo(x)
z = bar(y)
w = baz(z)

...is written in a concatenative language as a sequence of functions:

x foo bar baz

Active Languages

Let me know if I've got any of these misplaced!

Primarily Concatenative

Concatenative-ish, Chain-y, Pipe-y, Uniform Function Call Syntax, etc.

Cheat Sheets & Tutorials

Discord

IRC

Wikis

Wikipedia Topics

Subreddits

GitHub Topics

Blogs

Practice

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
3
lfnoise/sapf: Sound As Pure Form - a Forth-like language for audio synthesis using lazy lists and APL-like auto-mapping (github.com)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
1 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 1 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

A bit from the readme appreciating concatenative programming:

The Joy language introduced concatenative functional programming. This generally means a stack based virtual machine, and a program consisting of words which are functions taking an input stack and returning an output stack. The natural syntax that results is postfix. Over a very long time I have come to feel that syntax gets in between me and the power in a language. Postfix is the least syntax possible.

There are several reasons I like the concatenative style of programming:

  • Function composition is concatenation.

  • Pipelining values through functions to get new values is the most natural idiom.

  • Functions are applied from left to right instead of inside out.

  • Support for multiple return values comes for free.

  • No need for operator precedence.

  • Fewer delimiters are required:

    • Parentheses are not needed to control operator precedence.
    • Semicolons are not needed to separate statements.
    • Commas are not needed to separate arguments.

(Note: Sapf is inspired by, but is not purely a concatenative language because it has lexical variables.)

When I am programming interactively, I most often find myself in the situation where I have a value and I want to transform it to something else. The thing to do is apply a function with some parameters. With concatenative programming this is very natural. You string along several words and get a new value.