Alternative Y combinator definition

Question

I\'ve spent some time wrapping my head around the Y combinator lately, and I\'ve found that it is usually defined (more or less) as follows (this is in C#, but the language of c

Answer 1

I’m not sure what your question is but I guess the reason that neither the Y combinator nor your solution are seen much in the wild is twofold:

1. anonymous recursive functions are really rare; in particular since C# doesn’t have great (read: none at all) support for tail recursion.

2. There’s a much easier (more readable for the uninitiated) way of defining pseudo-“anonymous” recursive lambdas in C#:

   Func fac = null;
   fac = x => x == 0 ? 1 : fac(x - 1) * x;
   

   Granted, this is not anonymous but it’s “close enough” for practical purposes.