note mstone Each type of programming languages is based on a different computational model so your simulation has to be different as well. I understand what you're saying, but I disagree with your point.. rather strongly, in fact. One of the key assumptions in programming theory is Church's Thesis, which basically says that any two systems that can solve the same problem are structurally identical. Turing machines are identical to Mu-recursive grammars, are identical to Post systems, are identical to Lambda calculus, is identical to C, is identical to Perl, is identical to Lisp, etc, etc, etc. The real difference between our positions is one of level. You're looking at languages from a high-level perspective, where C, Perl, and Lisp look very different. I'm looking at languages from a low-level perspective, where an addressable block of storage is an addressable block of storage, whether I call it x[1], $x[1], car(cdr(x)), or x_values(1). Yes, different languages 'Huffmann code' operations differently. What's easy in Perl may be laborious in C, and vice versa. But if you really know how your low-level virtual computer works, you can, to quote [merlyn], "speak Perl with a Lisp." Technically, different programming languages are nothing more than dialects of the same low-level language. Procedural programming, Functional programming, and Object-Oriented programming all share a common heritage, and in future meditations I'll show just how much alike they all are. 218729 219318