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Archaeological dig to find the first Lisp example of the Y-combinator

I'm trying to find the first Lisp examples of the Y-combinator. Beyond that I am also trying to find the first time the Y-combinator was demonstrated using the factorial function and the mutually recursive definition of odd/even.

What works should I be looking at? The first Scheme paper references fixed-point combinators at page 16 and also shows the familiar LISP definition of the factorial function. But, it does not express the factorial function using a fixed-point operator.

By filipallberg at 2017-01-30 22:42 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 3913 reads

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Likely reference

The Wizard Book says (here) "See Stoy 1977 for details on the lambda calculus, and Gabriel 1988 for an exposition of the Y operator in Scheme." That's

Gabriel, Richard P. 1988. "The Why of Y". Lisp Pointers 2(2):15-25.

By John Shutt at Tue, 2017-01-31 00:42 | login or register to post comments