Re: [Haskell-cafe] Currying: The Rationale

Chad Scherrer wrote:

On 5/23/07, Philippa Cowderoy wrote:

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On Wed, 23 May 2007, Chad Scherrer wrote:

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Is (^2) really considered currying? As I understand it, this is syntactic sugar for a "section", and might confuse the issue a bit, since it's distinct from ((^) 2).

Sure, but it's (flip (^)) 2.

Well, ok, but you've changed the definition. If it were enough for it to be equivalent to a curried version, we could as well write

sq x = times (x,x) where times (x,y) = x * y

and argue that this is partial application of a curried function because it's equivalent to the curried version you gave. But I guess I'm being a bit pedantic here, and I suspect your definition is exactly how (^2) is desugared.

Philippa's version is still an instance of partial application; no one said that the function must be a variable, an arbitrary expression is fine. 2 is being partially applied to flip (^) so defining sq makes no sense. Also there are no curried functions and no partial applications anywhere in your code.