In programming and mathematics, a functional form is an operator or function that can either be applied to other operators (i.e. one or more of its operands or arguments are itself operators) or yield operators as result, or both. It is, thus, essentially the same as a higher-order function, although the syntax may be more reminiscent of (pre-, post-, or infix) operators applied to operands, rather than function application in the lambda calculus tradition. Examples of functional forms are function composition, construction, and apply-to-all, but there are numerous others.
Famous quotes containing the words functional and/or form:
“In short, the building becomes a theatrical demonstration of its functional ideal. In this romanticism, High-Tech architecture is, of course, no different in spirit—if totally different in form—from all the romantic architecture of the past.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)
“Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood. The commonest way in which we deceive either ourselves or others about understanding is by assuming something as familiar, and accepting it on that account; with all its pros and cons, such knowing never gets anywhere, and it knows not why.... The analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, was, in fact, nothing else than ridding it of the form in which it had become familiar.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)