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It seemed unnecessary, yes, although I suppose there are possibly some circumstances where one might want a `first` function—for example if one were folding ove
by ionfish 14y ago
It seemed unnecessary, yes, although I suppose there are possibly some circumstances where one might want a `first` function—for example if one were folding over a list of lists.
- 286c8cb04bda 14y agoThere are an infinite number of circumstances where one would want 'first'. In Lisp terms[1], 'first' is 'car', which, in conjunction with 'cdr'. With that combination recursive logic is regularly implemented. [1] Some Lisps already include this alias.
- dllthomas 14y agoIn most cases the "a[0]" approach works, however. The set of circumstances where you want "first" as a proper function is limited to those cases where you need to pass it into some higher order function (which is still infinite, granted, but it's not 'every time we'd want "car"').