[alexandria-devel] curry and rcurry -> papply and rpapply?

[Nikodemus Siivola]

2009/8/6 Leslie P. Polzer <sky at 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