On Sunday 25 July 2010 23:13:16, aditya siram wrote:
Eta-reducing is nice, and sometimes it makes code more readable. But 'flip' is one of those functions that always seems to hinder rather than help readability, conversely factoring out flip always makes code easier to comprehend. I don't see a need for its existence - maybe I'm missing something and more experienced Haskellers can comment.
-deech
For example, sortBy (flip compare) is very convenient (easier to parse¹ and it provides fewer opportunities for error than (\a b -> compare b a)). Also foldl' (flip Set.insert) Set.empty values and such stuff. Sometimes, functions have the wrong argument order for what you want to do, then flip is very handy. ¹ This is of course not a universal truth but a personal preference.