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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Lisp history: IF, etc.
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 22:09:24 -0000 (UTC)
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On Wed, 17 Apr 2024 17:44:01 +0100, Ben Bacarisse wrote:

> SNOBOL's patterns were much more "procedural" than REs.  For example,
> you could implement Russell's paradox in SNOBOL: a pattern that matches
> only those patterns that don't match themselves.

I would expect a paradox like that to behave the same way it does when 
expressed in λ-calculus: get stuck in an endless loop.

Mathematicians seem to be scared of paradoxes. But if you realize that 
they are just equivalent to endless loops in a computation, which is 
something we deal with all the time in Comp Sci, then they are no longer 
so scary.