Functional Programming For Dummies

Chapter 6

Working with Lists and Strings

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding and using lists

Manipulating lists

Working with Dict and Set

Using strings

Chapter 5 may have given you the idea that the use of lambda calculus in the functional programming paradigm precludes the use of standard programming structures in application design. That's not the case, however, and this chapter is here to dispel that myth. In this chapter, you begin with one of the most common and simplest data structures in use today: lists. A list is a programmatic representation of the real-world object. Everyone creates lists in real life and for all sorts of reasons. (Just imagine shopping for groceries without a list.) You do the same thing in your applications, even when you’re writing code using the functional style. Of course, the functional programming paradigm offers a few surprises, and the chapter discusses them, too.

Sometimes you need to create data structures with greater complexity, which is where the Dict and Set structures come in. Different languages use different terms for these two data structures, ...