2009/8/6 Leslie P. Polzer sky@viridian-project.de:
Nikodemus Siivola wrote:
I'm slowly coming to think that calling them CURRY and RCURRY is indeed a mistake we should stop propagating.
Alright, but don't you agree that partial-apply and esp. reverse-partial-apply are names that are too long for such a basic function?
No. Clarity is far more important than being terse: they are no slower to read, and meaning is that much more immediately obvious. Note though that I'm not convinced either is a real win over
(lambda (b) (foo a b))
and
(lambda (a) (foo a b))
in any way. Using PARTIAL-APPLY above would be sophistry and obfuscation. They become nice only when the number of arguments is increases:
(partial-apply #'foo a b c)
rather than
(lambda (d e f) (foo a b c d e f))
in which case the lenght of the name is a non-issue:
(papply #'foo a b c)
saves a whopping 6 letters.
Cheers,
-- Nikodemus