[chriswarbo]

> indeed you could argue that a language is functional iff it can be mapped to the lambda calculus.

Lambda calculus is a higher-order, applicative functional language. There are other kinds of functional language.

For example, kappa calculus is first-order. Joy is a pure functional programming language which is based around composition instead of application.

[arethuza]

Thanks - it was quite a while ago that I was taught about this kind of stuff and for postgraduate study I ended up going down a AI/engineering route rather than programming languages - I now wish I had done the latter given the resurgence of interest in functional programming :-)