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A higher-order function is a function that takes a function as an argument or returns one as a result. This is commonly used to customize the behavior of a generically defined function, often a looping construct or recursion scheme. Anonymous functions are a convenient way to specify such function arguments. The following examples are in Python 3.
Even without mechanisms to refer to the current function or calling function, anonymous recursion is possible in a language that allows functions as arguments.
This property is inherited from lambda calculus, where multi-argument functions are usually represented in curried form. Currying is related to, but not the same as partial application . [ 1 ] [ 2 ] In practice, the programming technique of closures can be used to perform partial application and a kind of currying, by hiding arguments in an ...
Folds can be regarded as consistently replacing the structural components of a data structure with functions and values. Lists, for example, are built up in many functional languages from two primitives: any list is either an empty list, commonly called nil ([]), or is constructed by prefixing an element in front of another list, creating what is called a cons node ( Cons(X1,Cons(X2,Cons ...
The term closure is often used as a synonym for anonymous function, though strictly, an anonymous function is a function literal without a name, while a closure is an instance of a function, a value, whose non-local variables have been bound either to values or to storage locations (depending on the language; see the lexical environment section below).
In programming language theory, lazy evaluation, or call-by-need, [1] is an evaluation strategy which delays the evaluation of an expression until its value is needed (non-strict evaluation) and which avoids repeated evaluations (by the use of sharing).
For brevity, these words will have the specified meanings in the following tables (unless noted to be part of language syntax): funcN A function.
In mathematics and computer science, apply is a function that applies a function to arguments. It is central to programming languages derived from lambda calculus, such as LISP and Scheme, and also in functional languages.