this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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Programming
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Wat? How can I "store the first element of the list separated from the lists tail" when the list is empty? Whether a list is empty or not is a runtime possibility, not a compile-time possibility.
Someone care to explain this part? It does not compute at all for me.
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A list can store zero or more elements. A
NonEmpty
can store one or more element. That's all.This overall strategy -- representing the top of a list as a dedicated value -- shows up elsewhere, notably in Forths, where it is called "top of stack" and often stored in a dedicated CPU register.