From: Nat Pryce <nat.pryce@...13media.com>
Date: 2002-08-27T19:21:45+09:00
Subject: Re: What New Language After Ruby?

On Tue, 2002-08-27 at 07:58, Rafael 'Dido' Sevilla wrote:
> Scheme and Lisp allow you to have curried functions if you so desire,
> e.g.:
> 
> (define a-curried-function
>    (lambda (x)
>      (lambda (y) ...))))
> 
> except that you wind up getting ugly calls that look like this
> 
> ((a-curried-function foo) bar)
> 
> all over the place, making the irritating parentheses problem even worse
> than it already is. :)

Exactly.  Currying is not supported by the language.  Although it can be
implemented by hand, it is not as convenient as when provided by the
language itself.

E.g. in Scheme, a function to add 2 to a number has to be defined as:

(define (add2 x) (+ x 2))

while in Haskell it's

add2 = + 2

This example is pretty simple, but the advantages of currying are most
apparent when using higher order functions.  E.g. compare:

define (double a-list) (map (lambda (x) (* x 2)) a-list))

to:

double a_list = map (* 2) a_list

Cheers,
	Nat.


-- 
Dr. Nathaniel Pryce, Technical Director, B13media Ltd.
Studio 3a, 22-24 Highbury Grove, London N5 2EA, UK
http://www.b13media.com