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Therefore, compilers will attempt to transform the first form into the second; this type of optimization is known as map fusion and is the functional analog of loop fusion. [2] Map functions can be and often are defined in terms of a fold such as foldr, which means one can do a map-fold fusion: foldr f z . map g is equivalent to foldr (f .
In computer programming, an anonymous function (function literal, expression or block) is a function definition that is not bound to an identifier.Anonymous functions are often arguments being passed to higher-order functions or used for constructing the result of a higher-order function that needs to return a function. [1]
In mathematics higher-order functions are also termed operators or functionals. The differential operator in calculus is a common example, since it maps a function to its derivative, also a function. Higher-order functions should not be confused with other uses of the word "functor" throughout mathematics, see Functor (disambiguation).
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).
The same technique can be used to map two-letter country codes like "us" or "za" to country names (26 2 = 676 table entries), 5-digit ZIP codes like 13083 to city names (100 000 entries), etc. Invalid data values (such as the country code "xx" or the ZIP code 00000) may be left undefined in the table or mapped to some appropriate "null" value.
The distinction between the two is subtle: "higher-order" describes a mathematical concept of functions that operate on other functions, while "first-class" is a computer science term for programming language entities that have no restriction on their use (thus first-class functions can appear anywhere in the program that other first-class ...
In computer science, a programming language is said to have first-class functions if it treats functions as first-class citizens. This means the language supports passing functions as arguments to other functions, returning them as the values from other functions, and assigning them to variables or storing them in data structures. [ 1 ]
In Python, a generator can be thought of as an iterator that contains a frozen stack frame. Whenever next() is called on the iterator, Python resumes the frozen frame, which executes normally until the next yield statement is reached. The generator's frame is then frozen again, and the yielded value is returned to the caller.