A bit of theory
The concepts we’ll discuss in this chapter are in some ways very similar, and in other ways quite different. It’s common to find confusion about their real meanings, and plenty of web pages misuse terms. You could even say that all the transformations in this chapter are roughly equivalent since they let you transform a function into another one that fixes some parameters, leaving other parameters free, and eventually leading to the same result. Okay, I agree; this isn’t very clear! So, let’s start by clearing the air and providing some short definitions, which we will expand on later. (If you feel your eyes are glazing over, please skip this section and return to it later!) Yes, you may find the following descriptions a bit perplexing, but bear with us—we’ll go into more detail in just a bit:
- Currying is transforming an m-ary function (that is, a function of arity m) into a sequence of m unary functions, each receiving...
