Re: Closure of lexical environment in Scheme closures

[Matt Hellige <matt@...>]

[Brian Casiello <bcasiello@gmail.com>]
> 
> So it's the fact that assigments (i.e. set!) are allowed, not the
> closure issue (since closures are handled the same way as scheme),
> that make lua not a purely functional language?
> 

Yes, basically. Scheme is also most emphatically *not* a purely
functional language, since it provides set! and many side-effecting
i/o operations. Scheme, Standard ML and friends are usually considered
"mostly-functional" languages, since they encourage programming in a
functional style, but rely on non-referentially transparent operations
at a basic level. 

For a much more rigorous (and quite beautiful, although challenging)
attempt to enforce a purely functional style, take a look at Haskell.
Be aware, though, that it's designers titled a relatively recent talk
"Wearing the Hair Shirt: a Haskell Retrospective," so it's not all
roses in purity-land... ;)

Matt

-- 
Matt Hellige                  matt@immute.net