Archive for March, 2009

First-Class Functions and Logical Negation in C#

negation

Introduction

Languages such as LISP,  ML,  oCaml F# and Scala have supported first-class functions for a long time.  Functional programming features are gradually diffusing into mainstream languages such as C#,  Javascript and PHP.   In particular,  Lambda expressions,  implicit typing,  and delegate autoboxing have made  C# 3.0 an much more expressive language than it’s predecssors.

In this article,  I develop a simple function that acts on functions:  given a boolean function fF.Not(f) returns a new boolean function which is the logical negation of f.  (That is,  F.Not(f(x)) == !f(x)).   Although the end function is simple to use,  I had to learn a bit about the details of C# to ge tthe behavior  I wanted — this article records that experience.
Continue Reading »