functional

functional

1. Psychol

a. relating to the purpose or context of a behaviour

b. denoting a psychosis such as schizophrenia assumed not to have a direct organic cause, like deterioration or poisoning of the brain

2. Maths a function whose domain is a set of functions and whose range is a set of functions or a set of numbers

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Functional

 

a mathematical concept originating in the calculus of variations, where it denotes a variable that depends on one or more functions or curves. Examples of functionals are the area bounded by a closed curve of a given length and the work of a force field along a curve. As functional analysis developed, the term “functional” acquired the more general sense of a numbervalued function defined on a linear space.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

functional

[′fəŋk·shən·əl]

(computer science)

In a linear programming problem involving a set of variables x_j , j = 1, 2, …, n, a function of the form c₁ x₁+ c₂ x₂+ ⋯ + c_n x_n (where the c_j are constants) which one wishes to optimize (maximize or minimize, depending on the problem) subject to a set of restrictions.

(mathematics)

Any function from a vector space into its scalar field.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

functional

(1)

Working correctly.

functional

(2)

Pertaining to functional programming.

functional

(3)

higher-order function.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)