[om] A Proposal for extending OpenMath with structure sharing

[Richard Fateman]

This notion of identity is tied to referential
transparency, a well understood issue among programming
language experts (this is a much smaller set than
"expert programmers" and probably not a subset...),
  especially those who think about
functional programming.


See, for example,
http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/foldoc/50/97.htm
for a definition I found on-line with google.

Essentially, if you say x=y,  then for any
function f,  f(x) = f(y).

Also, f(x)=f(x).

In this case f(random(100)) is not equal to f(random(100)).
Also, if x-x = 0, this is not true for x=[-1,1].

functional programming and lambda-binding provide
a language for addressing and solving these problems.

It might be possible to find other solutions, even better
solutions.  But I suggest that any recommendations first
address (a) How could this be solved by lambda binding?
(b) If it cannot be solved by (a), then another better solution
can be proposed.

RJF

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