Lazy K

Lazy K is one of those esoteric languages that's meant only as a theoretical exercise, or cruel joke, depending on your perspective. It tickles my fancy for a few reasons:

First, it has multiple syntaxes: lisp-style s-expressions, Jot style binary, and Unlambda style backticks. Each syntax looks different. It's like having a whole new language for every day of the week (except monday and weekends)!

Second, my name starts with K.

Third, it's lazy. :)

Fourth, John Tromp, the author, has a delicately balanced sense of humor: "the identity function is a program which copies its input to its output. Since Lazy K's syntax is such that the empty program is the identity function, the behavior of the UNIX cat utility (without arguments) can be expressed at least as compactly in Lazy K as in any other language."

Fifth, it comes with a compiler so that you can actually write Lazy K programs without going insane.

Thanks to Bill Glover for pointing me at Lazy K.

Posted on July 8, 2004 03:22 PM
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