Church encoding 2026-10-14
Church encoding represents data and operations as terms of the lambda calculus. A Church numeral represents a natural number by repeated function application; a Church Boolean selects one of two arguments.
Combinatory logic 2026-10-14
Combinatory logic describes computation by application and fixed combinator constants, eliminating bound variables through bracket abstraction. Its intensional weak reduction does not identify every pair of terms that becomes beta-equivalent after translation into lambda calculus.