Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Curried function terminology

Am Montag 05 Oktober 2009 11:52:17 schrieb Jon Fairbairn:

michael rice writes:

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This is from Learn You A Haskell: <snip> The language (in CAPS) in the above two paragraphs seems to be backwards.

It is. "5 is applied to that function" should be "5 is supplied to that function" (or that function is applied to 5) and so on. It's a fairly common error in writing this sort of thing¹, and given that the title "Learn You A Haskell" is totally ungrammatical, hardly seems surprising.

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In the first paragraph, since functions are conventionally "applied" to parameters shouldn't it read something like THE PARTIALLY APPLIED FUNCTION IS THEN APPLIED TO the 5? Or is the terminology different for Haskell,

That would be correct but awkward. IMO it would be better to say that 5 is then supplied (or fed) to (the partially applied function). I tend to feed arguments to functions if I don't want to apply a function to an argument.

No, but Haskell does have a lot of non-native users of English among its users.

I'm not sure that's relevant for this kind of error. I think it's more a lack of familiarity with mathematical terminology.

[1] A pet peeve of mine is "x supports y" being used backwards (as in "our application supports windows Vista", which would only make sense if it were something like a system tool that stopped Vista crashing.

Or if Microsoft uses the profits from App X to compensate deficits incurred by Vista. Or if the application sports banners "Vista is great! Get you a Vista today!" :D But seriously, yes, it's annoying.