Editing First-class citizen (section)

==Functions==
{{main article|First-class functions}}

Many programming languages support passing and returning function values, which can be applied to arguments.  Whether this suffices to call function values first-class is disputed.

Some authors require it be possible to create new [[function (programming)|function]]s at runtime to call them 'first-class'.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}} Under this definition, functions in C are not first-class objects; instead, they are sometimes called '''second-class objects''', because they can still be manipulated in most of the above fashions (via [[function pointer]]s).

In [[Smalltalk]], functions (methods) are first-class objects, just like Smalltalk classes. Since Smalltalk operators (+, -, etc.) are methods, they are also first-class objects.