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<title>Higher-order programming</title>
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<p><b>Higher-order programming</b> is a style of <a href="Computer_programming" title="Computer programming">computer programming</a> that uses software components, like functions, modules or objects, as values. It is usually instantiated with, or borrowed from, models of computation such as <a href="Lambda_calculus" title="Lambda calculus">lambda calculus</a> which make heavy use of <a href="Higher-order_function" title="Higher-order function">higher-order functions</a>. A programming language can be considered higher-order if components, such as procedures or labels, can be used just like data. For example, these elements could be used in the same way as arguments or values.<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-1"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>1<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>
</p><p>For example, in higher-order programming, one can pass <a href="Function_(programming)" class="mw-redirect" title="Function (programming)">functions</a> as arguments to other functions and functions can be the <a href="Return_value" class="mw-redirect" title="Return value">return value</a> of other functions (such as in <a href="Macro_(computer_science)" title="Macro (computer science)">macros</a> or for <a href="Interpreter_(computing)" title="Interpreter (computing)">interpreting</a>). This style of programming is mostly used in <a href="Functional_programming" title="Functional programming">functional programming</a>, but it can also be very useful in <a href="Object-oriented_programming" title="Object-oriented programming">object-oriented programming</a>. A slightly different interpretation of higher-order programming in the context of object-oriented programming are <a href="Higher_order_message" title="Higher order message">higher order messages</a>, which let messages have other messages as arguments, rather than functions.
</p><p>Examples of languages supporting this are <a href="Ada_(programming_language)" title="Ada (programming language)">Ada</a>, <a href="Wolfram_Language" title="Wolfram Language">Wolfram Language</a>, <a href="C_Sharp_(programming_language)" title="C Sharp (programming language)">C#</a>, <a href="Java_(programming_language)" title="Java (programming language)">Java</a>, <a href="ECMAScript" title="ECMAScript">ECMAScript</a> (<a href="ActionScript" title="ActionScript">ActionScript</a>, <a href="JavaScript" title="JavaScript">JavaScript</a>, <a href="JScript" title="JScript">JScript</a>), <a href="F_Sharp_(programming_language)" title="F Sharp (programming language)">F#</a>, <a href="Haskell_(programming_language)" class="mw-redirect" title="Haskell (programming language)">Haskell</a>, <a href="Lisp_(programming_language)" title="Lisp (programming language)">Lisp</a> (<a href="Common_Lisp" title="Common Lisp">Common Lisp</a>, <a href="Scheme_(programming_language)" title="Scheme (programming language)">Scheme</a>, <a href="Clojure" title="Clojure">Clojure</a>, others), <a href="Lua_(programming_language)" class="mw-redirect" title="Lua (programming language)">Lua</a>, <a href="Oz_(programming_language)" title="Oz (programming language)">Oz</a>, <a href="Perl" title="Perl">Perl</a>, <a href="PHP" title="PHP">PHP</a>, <a href="Prolog" title="Prolog">Prolog</a>,<sup id="cite_ref-Naish1996_2-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-Naish1996-2"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>2<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> <a href="Python_(programming_language)" title="Python (programming language)">Python</a>, <a href="Ruby_(programming_language)" title="Ruby (programming language)">Ruby</a>, <a href="Smalltalk" title="Smalltalk">Smalltalk</a>, <a href="Scala_(programming_language)" title="Scala (programming language)">Scala</a>, <a href="ML_(programming_language)" title="ML (programming language)">ML</a>, and <a href="Erlang_(programming_language)" title="Erlang (programming language)">Erlang</a>.
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="See_also">See also</h2></div>
<ul><li><a href="Prolog#Higher-order_programming" title="Prolog">Prolog#Higher-order programming</a></li>
<li><a href="Higher-order_logic_programming" class="mw-redirect" title="Higher-order logic programming">Higher-order logic programming</a></li></ul>
<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="References">References</h2></div>
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</style><cite id="CITEREFReynolds,_John_C.1972" class="citation report cs1">Reynolds, John C. (1972). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.classes.cs.uchicago.edu/archive/2007/fall/22100-1/papers/definterp.pdf">"Definitional Interpreters for Higher-Order Programming Languages"</a> <span class="cs1-format">(PDF)</span>. Proceedings of the ACM annual conference on - ACM '72 (Report). Vol.&nbsp;2. Association for Computing Machinery. pp.&nbsp;<span class="nowrap">717–</span>740. <a href="Doi_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="Doi (identifier)">doi</a>:<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://doi.org/10.1145%2F800194.805852">10.1145/800194.805852</a>. <a href="ISBN_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="ISBN (identifier)">ISBN</a>&nbsp;<bdi>9781450374927</bdi><span class="reference-accessdate">. Retrieved <span class="nowrap">December 19,</span> 2021</span>.</cite></span>
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<li id="cite_note-Naish1996-2"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-Naish1996_2-0">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text"><cite id="CITEREFNaish,_Lee1996" class="citation report cs1">Naish, Lee (1996). Higher-order logic programming in Prolog (Report). Department of Computer Science, University of Melbourne. <a href="CiteSeerX_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="CiteSeerX (identifier)">CiteSeerX</a>&nbsp;<span class="id-lock-free" title="Freely accessible"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.35.4505">10.1.1.35.4505</a></span>.</cite></span>
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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="External_links">External links</h2></div>
<ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://w3future.com/html/stories/hop.xml">"Higher Order Programming"</a> by Sjoerd Visscher (Uses JavaScript as example language)</li></ul>
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