Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part I
Communications of the ACM
The principle of sufficient reason: A guide to language design for parallel processing.
Proceedings of the conference on Programming languages and compilers for parallel and vector machines
ACM '66 Proceedings of the 1966 21st national conference
Recursion is more efficient than iteration
LFP '84 Proceedings of the 1984 ACM Symposium on LISP and functional programming
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Since higher level languages first appeared, computerpractitioners have been seeking a language which will permit themto define an algorithm to a computer without unnecessaryspecification of the sequence in which actions are to be carriedout. Recursive definitions meet this requirement, but a majorobstacle to their wider adoption has been the fact that so many ofour algorithms are iterative in nature, and it typically has notbeen easy to convert an iterative atgorithm to one in recursivedefinition form.However, if we look at recursive definitions from a somewhatbroader viewpoint and introduce the technique of "mu-recursion",then iterative algorithms can be expressed fairly naturally inrecursive form. This capability opens up possibilities for apractical recurstve definition language useful for a wide range ofcomputational tasks. Therefore, in addition to demonstrating how towrite practical algorithms with recursive definitions, we willdiscuss the prospects for a practical language and its compilation.Also covered briefly will be proof techniques and suggestions forfurther research.