I had seen that some primitive exists for this kind of thing in functional programming, but I have never gotten past a brief foray into that world. My first contact with a number of functional concepts was through Perl, and ever since I've meant to learn a serious functional language. It hasn't happened yet…
For anyone looking for an introduction to functional concepts in Perl, Mark-Jason Dominus' Higher Order Perl book is well worth a look… or will be once it's finished.
Makeshifts last the longest.
