Re: a brief introduction the lambda calculus for es users

[Scott Schwartz <schwartz@groucho.cs.psu.edu>]

Here's the promised followup... :-)

| in fact, i think Scott was pulling my chain.  even if he wasn't,
| i consider normal order evaluation ludicrous for unix shells,
| but don't want to debate the matter.  es has applicative order
| semantics.  period.

I wasn't seriously proposing that you change es at this stage, but that
doesn't mean I was pulling your chain.  Frankly, I can't see why you
think normal order evaluation is ludicrous.  Look at how tcl, a unix
shell, handles "if".  Parameters are some kind of quoted literal which
the function "if" selectively evals.  That's just an odd simulation of
the the desired (normal order) semantics.  It seems to work out.