"anonymous function"

At today's meeting, Michael Sperberg-McQueen wondered whether we used the 
term "anonymous function" elsewhere in our suite of specs. We do.

The XQuery 3.0 requirements say:
     "XQuery 3.0 MAY also provide the ability to define anonymous functions
     e.g., lambda expressions."


F+O 3.0 and 3.1 use it (in the description of 'function-name') to mean a 
function that isn't a "named function". I don't think it defines the latter 
term, but I gather it means a function whose 'name' property isn't absent.
And so an anonymous function is (here) just one whose 'name' *is* absent.

F+O also says that "a map is an anonymous function".


XSLT 3.0 says, in an example, that the type pattern
     ~function(*)[empty(function-name(.))]
matches any function item that refers to an anonymous function.


Serialization 3.1 says:
     "In many cases the serialization of an item conforms to the syntax of
     an XQuery expression whose result is that item. There are exceptions,
     however: for example the syntax will not be valid XQuery in the
     case of ... anonymous functions; ..."

-Michael

Received on Tuesday, 1 March 2016 20:17:38 UTC