A quick-n-dirty guide to function programming concepts in Uxntal.

Functions are the only primitive data types in untyped lambda calculus. It is nevertheless possible to represent numerals, booleans, lists, sets, characters and strings as higher order functions in untyped lambda calculus using Church encoding.

To familiarize yourself with Combinatory Logic, begin with the primer.

Church Booleans

In Uxntal, to apply an operation from a value on the stack, we use the Identity macro, which pops a byte from the stack and writes it in front of the Program Counter. It is possible to put the literal values of opcodes on the stack, operate the stack and apply them at a later time, this is done with the #00 STR 00 pattern.

%I { #00 STR 00 }
%True { LIT POP }
%False { LIT NIP }
%And { DUP I }
%Not { False True ROT I }
%Or { DUP Not I }
%Nand { And Not }

Booleans can be represented as operations that expect two values on the stack, returning the first argument if True, or POP, and the second if False, or NIP.

False True And False
True Not False
True False Or True

Currying

Currying is the technique of converting a routine that takes multiple arguments into a sequence of routines that each takes a single argument. Functions are curried when we partially apply their arguments, both invocations returned functions into which the partially applied values are baked.

INCRABC ( a b c -- res ) ROT INC ROT INC ROT INC JMP2r

Running routines over an array

You might want to run a routine over an array of data, in the style of:

array.each(incr)

You can create a each routine that way, but remember that this is not immutable.

|0100

	;array ;incr ,each JSR ;send ,each JSR POP2

BRK

@each ( arr* fn* -- arr* )

	,&fn STR2 DUP2
	LDAk #00 SWP ADD2k NIP2 SWP2
	&l
		INC2 [ LIT2 &fn $2 ] JSR2
		GTH2k ,&l JCN
	POP2 POP2

JMP2r

@incr ( addr* -- addr* ) STH2k LDA INC STH2kr STA STH2r JMP2r
@send ( addr* -- addr* ) LDAk #18 DEO JMP2r

@array 06 &body "abcdef