Functional programming

Olaf Chitil

Abstract

In Benjamin W. Wah, editor, Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering, volume 2, pages 182-196. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, January 2009.

Functional programming is a programming paradigm like object-oriented programming and logic programming. Functional programming comprises both a specific programming style and a class of programming languages that encourage and support this programming style. Functional programming enables the programmer to describe an algorithm on a high-level, in terms of the problem domain, without having to deal with machine-related details. A program is constructed from functions that only map inputs to outputs, without any other effect on the program state. Thus a function will always return the same output, regardless of when and in which context the function is used. These functions provide clear interfaces, separate concerns and are easy to reuse. A small and simple set of highly orthogonal language constructs assists in writing modular programs.

Bibtex Record

@incollection{2874, author = {Olaf Chitil}, title = {Functional Programming}, month = {January}, year = {2009}, pages = {182-196}, keywords = {determinacy analysis, Craig interpolants}, note = {}, doi = {}, url = {http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/2009/2874}, publication_type = {incollection}, submission_id = {2623_1235411221}, ISBN = {978-0-471-38393-2}, booktitle = {Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering}, publisher = {John Wiley & Sons}, editor = {Benjamin W. Wah}, volume = {2}, address = {Hoboken, NJ}, }