I believe both of those functions are referential transparent because they're pure functions. An example of a non referential transparent function would be: r.

I believe both of those functions are referential transparent because they're pure functions. An example of a non referential transparent function would be: r.table('foo').update(lambda row: {'bar' : r.table('bar').get(row["bar_id"])) This still works but gets evaluated in a different way to make sure every secondary winds up with the same value.