Brian McNamara wrote:
"Functor" has for years been commonly used to mean "function object" (in addition to its original meaning from category theory). [http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~bala/c++-function-objects.pdf; http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/functors.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functor]. Have no referees of your academic publications brought this up? There is no need to name anew a common concept: therefore, s/functoid/functor globally!
I don't recall this comment coming up from referees of the publications. Note that, to the FP community, "functor" means something completely different from what it means in C++.
In any case, "functoids" as described in those papers were a "new concept" requiring a new name. A "functoid" was a "functor" that also supported polymorphic return-type deduction.
This distinction is now becoming dated, though. In any case, the overall point here (that the Boost documents on FC++ need to be tailored to a C++ audience, rather than an FP audience) is taken.
A "signed functor" ??? :-) -- Joel de Guzman http://www.boost-consulting.com http://spirit.sf.net