On Fri, 9 Jul 2004 04:48:18 +0900, Hal Fulton <hal9000 / hypermetrics.com> wrote:
> We're OT now, but my ignorance of FP is such that I can't imagine
> a language without assignment.

Well, it's certainly possible to write a Ruby program that does no
explicit assignment. Contrived:

    File.open("reversed", "w") { |f| f.write
File.readlines("original").reverse }

A bit harder, but equally contrived:

    File.open("reversed", "w") { |f| File.readlines("original").each {
|e| f.write e.reverse } }

If we had a #reverse_map, then we could write an inverted, mirrored
file without explicit assignment.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue / gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin / halostatue.ca