On Fri, 11 Sep 2015 at 10:41 Herbert Kruitbosch < python-...@herbertkruitbosch.com> wrote:
> Dear developers, > > First of all, I'm a programmer for a data science company and I recently > graduated. > > That being said, I have wondered why python does not have syntactical > support (like syntax sugar) for partial function application. I think > partial function application is a powerful concept, but also think that the > implementation in functional.partial as described here: > > https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0309/ > > is too verbose. Moreover I think the functional programming paradigm is a > powerful one in general, especially when implemented as much as possible in > an iterative language as python avoiding the typical problems we have with > purely functional languages like Haskell. An plea for this concept is that, > for example, small pieces Haskell (or functional) code can be extremely > expressive and concise. > > I was wondering if there are considerations for including partial function > application syntactically. I very often find myself writing statements as: > > data_sorted = sort(data, key = lambda x: x[0]) > To start off, I wouldn't write it that way, but this way: data_sorted - sort(data, key=operator.itemgetter(0)) > > where I would prefer > > data_sorted = sort(data, key = #1[0]) > That syntax won't work because `#` is used to start a comment and there is no way to disambiguate that in the grammar. > > where the #1 is similar to the one used in Mathematica for the same > purpose. That is, an expression with #1 becomes an anonymous function which > takes one argument, and, obviously, if a #n is included, the > anonymous function takes n arguments. > > Notice that #1[0] does not seem like partial function application, however > it is if you (C++'isly) assume that the deference operation [] is a > function dereference(subscriptable, subscript). > > Obviously, I am only expecting that you get these type of suggestions all > the time and that there is a good change you do not find it adequate for > many reasons, for example keeping the language compact. I this case, I > would also like to hear so. > In my code the few times I want partial function applications I have found the functions in the operator module meet that need, else functools.partial or a quickly written closure do the trick. I don't think dedicated syntax is warranted when those other options already exist to meet the same need. > > Yours sincerely and thank you in advance, > Thanks for the suggestion! -Brett > Herbert > > _______________________________________________ > Python-Dev mailing list > Python-Dev@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev > Unsubscribe: > https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/brett%40python.org >
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