Reference Function Name Via Variable?

[Geoff Canyon]

A lot of people have made good suggestions, but I think you're looking  
for first class functions:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-class_function

They're common in functional languages, rare in procedural languages.  
In particular you're looking for what is commonly called the map  
function:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_(higher-order_function)

That would allow something like this:

function map f,aList -- takes a function and a list, and returns the  
list with the function applied to each element
   put empty into returnList
   repeat for each item i in aList
     put f(i) & comma after returnList
   end repeat
   return char 1 to -2 of tReturn
end map

This is territory into which Revolution (and xTalks in general)  
ventures unwillingly and ungracefully. In particular the fact that  
there is no nice way to handle arbitrarily nested lists stands as a  
nasty roadblock here. Nested arrays might be an answer but I haven't  
thought it through.

regards,

Geoff

On Jan 15, 2009, at 11:45 AM, Scott Rossi wrote:

> Hi List:
>
> Just curious...  Is there any way to construct a function using a name
> stored in a variable without resorting to "do"?  For example:
>
> on mouseUp
>   put "hello" into pData1
>   put "world" into pData2
>   put "shout" into test
>   do "answer" && test & "(pData1,pData2)"
> end mouseUp
>
> function shout pData1,pData2
>   return pData1 && pData2
> end shout
>
> Can the last line of the mouseUp handler be written without "do"?   
> I'm not
> against using "do", just wondering if there's another option.
>
> Thanks & Regards,
>
> Scott Rossi
> Creative Director
> Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design