A variable-arity procedural interface

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a procedural interface that handles optional arguments and indefinite numbers of arguments in a convenient and efficient manner without resorting to storing the arguments in a language-dependent data structure. This interface solves many of the problems inherent in the use of lists to store indefinite numbers of arguments. Simple recursion can be used to consume such arguments without the complexity problems caused by the use of the Lisp procedure apply on argument lists. An extension that supports multiple return values is also presented.

REFERENCES

• 1: Patrick Bellot , Véronique Jay, A theory for natural modelisation and implementation of functions with variability, Proc. of a conference on Functional programming languages and computer architecture, p.212-233, October 1987, Portland, Oregon, United States
• 2: Carl E. Hewitt and Brian Smith, "Towards a Programming Apprentice," IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering SE-1, i (March 1975).
• 3: P. J. Landin, The next 700 programming languages, Communications of the ACM, v.9 n.3, p.157-166, March 1966 [doi>10.1145/365230.365257]
• 4: Robin Milner, A proposal for standard ML, Proceedings of the 1984 ACM Symposium on LISP and functional programming, p.184-197, August 06-08, 1984, Austin, Texas, United States [doi>10.1145/800055.802035]
• 5: J Rees , W Clinger, Revised report on the algorithmic language scheme, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.21 n.12, p.37-79, Dec. 1986 [doi>10.1145/15042.15043]
• 6: Guy L. Steele, Jr., Common LISP: the language, Digital Press, Newton, MA, 1984

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.3 Language Constructs and Features
          Subjects: Procedures, functions, and subroutines

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design