[Haskell-cafe] Reference for technique wanted

[wren ng thornton]

On 10/31/10 7:10 PM, Derek Elkins wrote:
> Well, you can get "A Novel Representation of Lists and Its Application
> to the Function 'Reverse'" by John Hughes online published in 1986
> which is referenced by Wadler's 1987 "The Concatenate Vanishes" and
> references Richard Bird's 1984 paper "Transformational programming and
> the paragraph problem" though I'd be quite surprised if that was the
> first place the representation appeared in print.

Barring the "worse than useless" appellation, the technique has been 
around in logic programming (and classic Lisp, IIRC) for a few decades 
longer. I've always heard it referred to as part of the folklore of 
logic/functional programming though, so I'm not sure of any earlier 
print references off-hand.

(Though I find it curious that you think the logic version is so 
different...)

-- 
Live well,
~wren