Function Currying

[Bill Baxter]

David Medlock wrote:
> David Medlock wrote:
>
>>
>> Nice walter.
>>
>> Its too bad though that inner function delegates don't live past the 
>> stack frame or this wouldn't really be necessary..hehe.
>>
>> -DavidM
> 
> Oh yes I will add another plug for a great book which explains currying 
> in the context of functions as well as programs:
> 
> http://www.dina.dk/~sestoft/pebook/
> 
>

Oh yeh... that's the reason I had "partial evaluation" on the brain when 
I should have been saying "partial application".  I looked over that 
link the last time you posted it, too.

 From what I gather from that web page and a quick google for "partial 
evaluation", it is a much more advanced beast than partial function 
application.  In partial evaluation you'd take something like 
triple_integral(fx,fy,fz) that integrates over three variables, and your 
partial evaluation usage would be:

       single_integral = partial_eval(triple_integral, gx, gy);
       answer = single_integral(gz);

Looks just like partial application, except in partial evaluation, the 
first two variables would actually be precomputed (integrated out) to 
create a new function that really did not require gx and gy to perform 
its computation.

Is that the way you understand it, too, David?

If so then there ain't no simple 1-page template that's going to be able 
to do that for the general case.  :-)  But it would be mighty cool if 
there were.

--bb