Catamorphisms in Functional Programming
In functional programming, a catamorphism is a generalization of the folds on lists known from functional programming to arbitrary algebraic data types that can be described as initial algebras.
One of the first publications to introduce the notion of a catamorphism in the context of programming was the paper “Functional Programming with Bananas, Lenses, Envelopes and Barbed Wire”, by Erik Meijer et al., which was in the context of the Squiggol formalism.
The dual concept is that of anamorphisms, a generalization of unfolds.
Read more about this topic: Catamorphism
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