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