source : 7 lines of code, 3 minutes: Implement a programming language
[[Lambda calculus]] has three fundamental operations: variable references, anonymous functions and function calls.
\(\lambda v . e\) is comperable to (v) => e
in JavaScript. \((f e)\) is a function call.
If we wanted to define a lambda calculus interpreter, it would be trivial to express that:
eval : Expression * Environment -> Value
apply : Value * Value -> Value
Environment = Variable -> Value
Value = Closure
Closure = Lambda * Environment
It also has a trivial implementation in [[Racket]]:
#lang racket
; bring in the match library:
(require racket/match)
; eval matches on the type of expression:
(define (eval exp env)
(match exp
[`(,f ,e) (apply (eval f env) (eval e env))]
[`(Ξ» ,v . ,e) `(closure ,exp ,env)]
[(? symbol?) (cadr (assq exp env))]))
; apply destructures the function with a match too:
(define (apply f x)
(match f
[`(closure (Ξ» ,v . ,body) ,env)
(eval body (cons `(,v ,x) env))]))
; read in, parse and evaluate:
(display (eval (read) '())) (newline)
The rest of this post has a longer interpreter and some worthwhile links.
Rendering context...