Naming higher order functions

Jonathan Hogg jonathan at onegoodidea.com
Fri Feb 1 11:32:28 EST 2002


On 31/1/2002 18:56, in article 3c59901d_2 at corp.newsgroups.com, "Joshua
Muskovitz" <joshm at taconic.net> wrote:

>> "Erno Kuusela" <erno-news at erno.iki.fi> wrote in message
>> news:kuelk63747.fsf at lasipalatsi.fi...
>>> what would be a good name for the following function?
>>> 
>>> def name_me(n):
>>>     def g(x):
>>>         return x[n]
>>>     return g
> 
> "RefactorMe"


def curry( f, *xs ):
    return lambda *ys: f( *xs+ys )

def get_nth_item( n, x ):
    return x[n]

get_5th_item = curry( get_nth_item, 5 )


(for a suitable definition of "nth" where 0th comes first...)

If you're not an FP-head then you might prefer (also more complete):


def partial_apply( f, args, keys={} ):
    if not callable(f):
        raise TypeError( "'%s' object is not callable" % type(f).__name__ )
    targs = tuple(args)
    tkeys = dict(keys)
    def tempf( *nargs, **nkeys ):
        tkeys.update( nkeys )
        return f( *targs + nargs, **tkeys )
    return tempf

get_5th_item = partial_apply( get_nth_item, (5,) )


Jonathan




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