Functional programming (FP) is again getting popular in recent years. Why again? Because the paradigm of FP is very old. Early languages like Lisp, APL from the 1950/60s were already functional. Later imperative languages like C, Pascal, etc. replaced functional languages to some degree. Since some years functional languages become again more popular.
What is the difference between the two styles?
Functional programming
As the name suggests, FP is all about functions. About composing functions and about applying those functions on data to transform the data. Functions can be anonymous functions created at runtime or named functions. FP is declarative. It is more important to say what should be done than how.
A more strict application of FP uses pure functions. Expressions consisting of pure functions are referencial transparent which means that an expression can be replaced with the resulting value, and vice versa (wiki). This means that functions that have side-effects are not referencial transparent. Referencial transparency then also implies that parameters to functions (the input set) are not changed. A pure function produces new data, but doesn't change the old data where the new data was produced from. It is said that those functions are not "destructive". Additionally this implies that there exists some immutability regarding data structures, whether the data structures are immutable by design or functions just don't mutate the not-necessarily-immutable data structures (the former requires a lot less discipline from the programmer than the later). Those characteristics are often also mentioned together with data-driven development.
Aside of the practical benefits of the above, like: it's a lot easier to reason on pure functions and they tend to be easier to maintain (especially in multi-core and multi-threaded environments) and a (subjective) nicer way to code. Though it's of course still possible to write crap code that no one understands and is hard to maintain. The skill of the programmer is still imperative.
There are also disadvantages like: FP tends to be more memory consuming and requires more CPU cycles. Because practically more data is produced which means more memory allocations are necessary and more memory must be cleaned up which costs garbage collector time. FP languages from very early on had garbage collectors. In FP is quite a bit of math involved with category theory, morphisms, functors, etc. I will concentrate on practical aspects in this blog post.
Design considerations
From a design perspective, FP programs usually have a purity core where only data transformations are taking place in form of pure functions, a 'functional core'. But even in FP programs there have to be side-effects, and there is state. Languages deal differently with this. Haskell for example knows 'monads' to deal with side-effects and state. Erlang/Elixir have processes where state is locked in. Side-effects, state as well as threading should happen on the system boundaries. The hexagonal architecture is also something that nicely applies to FP.
Assignments
Some FP languages even don't know assignments. Erlang/Elixir for example has a = operator, but it's not an assignment operator. The meaning is different. The = actually is a match operator, similar as in mathmatics where you say x = y which means that x is equal to y. Let's have a quick look at Erlang:
4> X = 1.
1
5> Y = 2.
2
6> X = Y.
** exception error: no match of right hand side value 2
The X and Y variables here take the corresponding values of 1 and 2 because at this point they are unset. Since they are unset the = sees to it that X matches with 1 and fills X.
But when both variables are set and = is used the match fails.
Elixir is a little less strict on the last part:
iex(1)> x = 1
1
iex(2)> y = 2
2
iex(3)> x = y
2
See, the last part works in Elixir. But there is still an important difference to a normal assignment. The new x has a different memory location than the previous x which means the value in the old memory locations is not altered.
Immutability
Immutability is usually a key characteristic in FP languages. FP languages provide immutable datatypes like tuples, lists, arrays, maps, trees, etc.
Not only do they provide immutable datatypes but the datatype functions are pure functions as they create a new output from the input while not changing the input. For example removing or adding items to a list create a new list.
This behavior is built into FP languages (ML, Haskell, Erlang/Elixir, just to name a few). So when programming one is mostly in an immutable bubble. To maintain immutability inside the immutable bubble a 'shallow' copy of the data is usually sufficient. This means that datatype functions create a copy of the datatype but share the instances that the datatype holds.
What is not necessarily built-it are deep copies that are necessary when one leaves the immutable bubble, i.e. to do I/O.
Design Patterns
Just a few words on this. Most of the design patterns of object-oriented programming, as captured in the Gang of Four book, apply also for FP, but their implementation is in many cases much simpler. I.e. A strategy pattern in FP is just a function. A visitor pattern could in a simple form just be a reduce function. But more on that in my blog series about desing pattern in Common Lisp.
Imperative programming
Imperative programming (IP) on the other hand is more about mutating the state of a machine with every instruction/statement. I would tend to say that also Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) is imperative. The difference being that OOP allows to give more structure to the program. From a memory and CPU perspective the paradigm of IP is actually more efficient. And I've read somewhere (can't remember where, but it makes sense to me) that IP did replace FP in the mid to late of last century because memory was expensive and CPUs were not fast, and IP clearly had an advantage there when the value of a memory location is just changed instead of a new memory location allocated and the old one has to be cleaned up.
But in todays multi-core and multi-threaded computing world state is a problem. It's not possible without state but how it is dealt with is important and different in FP.
So, but this blog post should actually be about FP and Common Lisp.
Now more on Common Lisp
Common Lisp is a Lisp (obviously). Lisps have always had functions as first-class elements of the language. Functions can be anonymous, or can have a name, they can be created at runtime and they can be passed around in the same way as strings or other elements can. Every function returns something, even is it's just nil (for an empty function).
Common Lisp is insofar a bit special as it allows to program in muliple paradigms. Historically it had to capture, consolidate and modernize all the Lisp implementations flowing around at the time. So it has a rather large but well balanced feature spec and it allows both OOP (with CLOS) and FP. Scheme for example doesn't have OOP elements. Common Lisp doesn't have the very strict functional characteristics, like the mentioned assignments above. Functions in Common Lisp can have side effects and Common Lisp has assignments in form of set, setq and setf. For FP this means that the programmer has to be more disciplined in how he programms and which elements of the language he uses. But it's of course possible.
When we look at the important characteristics for FP:
- first-class functions
- immutable data structures
- non-destructive functions
Then we have to be a bit careful what to use of all the things available in Common Lisp. All data structures in Lisp are mutable. Lists are still useable because they are usually used in a non-destructive way. Like the function cons creates a new list by prepending a new element to the head of to a list. This means that the old list is not modified or destroyed but a new list is created. delete-if (in contrast to remove-if) is destructive because it modifies the input list. The array/vector and hashmap data structures and their functions are destructive and shouldn't be used when doing FP, or you create a copy for each change. See modf later.
Immutable data structures - FSet
The immutable data structures library FSet should be a good fit when doing FP in Common Lisp. Of course FSet defines a large set of functions for finding, comparing, building unions, etc.
There are more alternatives offering this functionality. See for example Sycamore.
Custom immutable types
While immutable maps are commonly used in FP instead of classes or structure types, they have one disadvantage. They don't allow mapping on a type. In some FP languages like Erlang/Elixir it's possible to dispatch a function based on a destructuring of the function arguments, like a map or list. But Elixir also allows to define a type for a map structure which helps in the dispatch. And to give the map a 'name' could be a good thing.
In Common Lisp it would be cool to use the generic functions facility also for FP because it allows multi-dispatch and is generally a nice feature. But it can't destructure lists or maps on function arguments, it can only check on a type or identity of any object using eql. Both won't work well when using FSet with just maps, or sets.
So in addition to the data structures available in FSet the structure type in Common Lisp (defstruct) could still be useable. It defines a type, so we can use it with generic functions, we can check equality on the slots with equalp, and we can set the slots to :read-only which prevents from changing the slot values. defstruct automatically generates a 'copier' function that copies a structure. This copy is just a flat copy and it doesn't allow to change values while copying. Let's have a quick look at some of the structure things:
CL-USER> (defstruct foo (bar "" :read-only t))
FOO
CL-USER> (defstruct bar (foo "" :read-only t))
BAR
The option :read-only has the effect that defstruct doesn't generate 'setter' functions to change the slots. (though to be thorough it is still possible to change the slot values using slot-value function. But the public interface does indeed disallow it.)
CL-USER> (defgeneric m-dispatch (arg))
#<STANDARD-GENERIC-FUNCTION M-DISPATCH #x3020034B2EEF>
CL-USER> (defmethod m-dispatch ((arg foo))
(format t "me: foo~%"))
#<STANDARD-METHOD M-DISPATCH (FOO)>
CL-USER> (defmethod m-dispatch ((arg bar))
(format t "me: bar~%"))
#<STANDARD-METHOD M-DISPATCH (BAR)>
CL-USER> (m-dispatch (make-foo :bar "bar"))
me: foo
NIL
CL-USER> (m-dispatch (make-bar :foo "foo"))
me: bar
NIL
The above shows the multi-dispatch on the different structure types 'foo and 'bar. This is quite nice. For using the structure type in FP we'd 'just' have to come up with a copy function that allows changing the values on the copy.
Modf to the rescue
The Modf library does exactly that. modf has to be used instead of setf. But it works in the same way as setf, except that it creates a new instance of the structure instead of modifying the existing structure. Lets see this in action:
CL-USER> (defstruct foo (x 1) (y 2))
FOO
CL-USER> (defparameter *foo* (make-foo))
*FOO*
CL-USER> *foo*
#S(FOO :X 1 :Y 2)
CL-USER> (modf (foo-x *foo*) 5)
#S(FOO :X 5 :Y 2)
CL-USER> *foo*
#S(FOO :X 1 :Y 2)
Following this little example we see that modf doesn't touch the original *foo* instance but creates a new one with x = 5. This is pretty cool. It's getting better. This also works for standard objects of CLOS:
CL-USER> (defclass my-class ()
((x :initform 1)
(y :initform 2)))
#<STANDARD-CLASS MY-CLASS>
CL-USER> (defparameter *my-class* (make-instance 'my-class))
*MY-CLASS*
CL-USER> *my-class*
#<MY-CLASS #x302002101F8D>
CL-USER> (slot-value *my-class* 'x)
1 (1 bit, #x1, #o1, #b1)
CL-USER> (slot-value *my-class* 'y)
2 (2 bits, #x2, #o2, #b10)
CL-USER> (modf (slot-value *my-class* 'x) 5)
#<MY-CLASS #x302002250CFD>
CL-USER> (slot-value * 'x)
5 (3 bits, #x5, #o5, #b101)
CL-USER> (slot-value *my-class* 'x)
1 (1 bit, #x1, #o1, #b1)
Regular classes don't implement print-object automatically. But we see from the memory reference that a new instance was created: #x302002101F8D vs. #x302002250CFD.
So now we basically have our immutable custom types. The only important thing to remember, which again requires discipline, is to use modf instead of setf.
Even though modf also works on the built-in data structures like lists, arrays and hashmaps I would probably still tend to use a library like FSet.
One thing to mention here is that modf only does 'shallow' copies of the data, which means that only a new instance of the 'container' is created while the internal objects (if they are references) are shared.
More things that help doing FP
Function composition
Common Lisp does not have a construct to compose functions other than just wrapping function calls like: (f(g(h())). But that is not nice to read. The defact standard Common Lisp library alexandria has a function for that which then looks like this:
CL-USER> (funcall (alexandria:compose #'1+ #'1+ #'1+) 1)
4 (3 bits, #x4, #o4, #b100)
This generates a composition function of the three functions 1+ like: (1+ (1+ (1+ 1))) which then can be called using funcall, or provided as a higher-order function. The call order is still from right to left.
There is another alternative way of composing functions which comes from Clojure. It's actually rather a piping than a composition. Elixir also knows this as the |> operator. In Clojure it's called 'threading'. In Common Lisp there 3 different libraries available which implement this. The one used here is binding-arrows. There are a few more operators (macros) available for threading with slightly different features than the used ->. I like this a lot and use it often.
CL-USER> (binding-arrows:->
1
1+
1+
1+)
4 (3 bits, #x4, #o4, #b100)
The normal 'thread' arrow -> passes the previous value as the first argument to the next function. There is also a ->> arrow operator which passes the value as the last argument.
Pattern matching
Pattern matching is kind of standard on languages that have FP features. In Common Lisp pattern matching is not part of the standard. But the library Trivia fills that gap. Trivia has an amazing feature set. It can match (and capture) on all native Common Lisp data structures, including structure and class slots. There are extensions for pattern matching on regular expressions and also for the before mentioned FSet library. And it can be relatively easily expanded with new patterns. The documentation is OK but could be more and better structured.
Here a simple example:
;; matching on an FSet map
(match (map (:x 5) (:y 10))
((fset-map :x x :y y)
(list x y)))
=> (5 10)
;; matching on a list with capturing the tail
(match '(1 2 3)
((list* 1 tail)
tail))
=> (2 3)
Currying
Currying is something you see in most FP languages. It is a way to decompose one function with multiple arguments into a sequence of functions with less arguments. In practical terms it reduces the dimension of available inputs to a function. For example, say you have a function coords that takes 2 arguments and produces a coordinate in a x-y coordinate system. With currying we can lock one dimension, x or y.
Say we have a function:
CL-USER> (defun coords (x y)
(cons x y))
COORDS
Now I want to lock the x coordinate to a value, say 1:
CL-USER> (curry #'coords 1)
#<COMPILED-LEXICAL-CLOSURE (:INTERNAL CURRY) #x3020022BB83F>
The curry function here creates a new function that locks the x coordinate to 1 and now supports only one argument. Calling this now produces:
CL-USER> (funcall * 2)
(1 . 2)
CL-USER> (funcall ** 5)
(1 . 5)
* denotes the last, ** the second last result in the REPL.
So currying did destructure the coord function call into two function calls. But the curried function can be stored and reused. It represents only a single dimention from the original 2 dimentional set.
Common Lisp also doesn't have currying built-in. But it's easy to create. The following function did the trick above:
CL-USER> (defun curry (fun &rest cargs)
(lambda (&rest args)
(apply fun (append cargs args))))
CURRY
Though there is no need to create this. This is also part of Alexandria library. Which also provides rcurry to curry from the right.
More info
There are more references on the web regarding functional programming in Common Lisp. The following I found useful.
