Re: [Haskell-cafe] Idiomatic Haskell equivalent of "keyword arguments" to functions

On 12/29/06, Neil Mitchell wrote:

Records are your friend. [...] The other alternative is:

data EmailParams = Body String | Port Int | Mailserver String

Neat ideas. Thanks. I guess there could there be disadvantages involved in using a list of arguments, rather than a curried function (can't easily do partial application, for example) - but I don't know if these would be a big deal in any practical program. As I mentioned, I'm interested in trying to expand my brain, as well as just solve a particular problem :-) Thanks for the ideas - I'll ponder on them. On 12/29/06, David House wrote:

On 29/12/06, Paul Moore wrote:

...

I looked at wxHaskell for inspiration

This is actually a really nice solution, if you think about it: [...]

Oh, in principle I agree (your 3 reasons are exactly why I like keyword parameters in Python). I'm not particularly sure if it's a bit over-complex for the sorts of things I have in mind, but it certainly looks nice in wxHaskell.

Try again to understand the typing, hopefully you'll see this is probably The Best Way. If you have any questions about the typing itself, just post them here.

I'm sure I can follow the typing with a bit of thinking, and it should be educational to work it through. Thanks to both of you for some useful ideas. Paul.