Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!otter.hpl.hp.com!hpltoad!cdollin!kers From: kers@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Chris Dollin) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: type checking problem Message-ID: Date: 22 May 91 08:11:53 GMT References: <1991May16.182932.26327@kodak.kodak.com> <1991May21.144739.23901@maths.nott.ac.uk> Sender: news@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Usenet News Administrator) Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK. Lines: 27 In-Reply-To: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk's message of 21 May 91 14:47:39 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: cdollin.hpl.hp.com Dr A. N. Walker says: Cf Algol Bulletin #37, July 1974, p 24 [the third time I've given this reference in a few weeks!] for the Algol partial parametrisation proposals: optimum_x := optimise (myf ( , a, b, c)) My God! Did they *seriously* propose to do partial parameterisation by simply *omitting* the remaining arguments to a call? No extra syntax - like a place-holder symbol - *at all*? The typechecker would spot some silly mistakes, but I'd have thought that having eg a new keyword to make it clear what was going on would have been better ... myf( _, a, b, c ) or myf( ARG, a, b, c ) [clear to the *reader*, not the compiler. Currying, incidentally, doesn't suffer from this so much - the order in which you can partially parameterise is fixed, and there aren't the commas in the functional-call syntax either (usually).] -- Regards, Kers. | "You're better off not dreaming of the things to come; Caravan: | Dreams are always ending far too soon."