Re: Self-awareness of functions?

[Dirk Laurie <dpl@...>]

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 09:30:28PM +0200, Lorenzo Donati wrote:
> Dirk Laurie wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 09:22:36AM +0200, Dirk Laurie wrote:
> >> Because of the need for a local name for the function, you can't define
> >> an anonymous recursive function, e.g. for use in an argument list.  
> 
> Wouldn't this idiom suffice?
> 
> fac = (function()
> 	local function fact(x) if x<2 then return 1 else return x*fact(x-1) end end
> 	return fact
> end)()
> fact = "Napoleon escaped from Elba."
> print(fac(5)) --> 120
> 

It took me a minute to figure out why it works, but many idioms are 
like that.

It's got this over the "Y constructor" that 'fact' remains a function
of one argument.  But is it easier to read?

Dirk