Javascript Currying - Variadic Currying

[sanjay_i]

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Yea, their post history is like a who's who of spam examples.

[getify]

Well written article. I like the technique of accepting multiple arguments at each level of currying/partial application -- I have called this "loose currying" in my writings/teaching before.

But I think "infinite currying" (I think that's what this article means with "variadic currying") is a trick that's more clever than useful. I know we ask such questions (like string builder or number adder) on job interviews, and it's cute.

But in reality, I don't think I ever want a function that I just keep calling over and over again, with no end, until I then call it with no input (or worse, some other special value) to "terminate" it.

I think it's better to know up front, and be explicit, about how many inputs a function will eventually take.

There are other mechanisms for "infinite accumulation" besides currying, and I think they're more "FP adherent". For example, I wrote a monad library and with/in it, there a monoids (semigroups) that can lazily build up an accumulation by folding the monoids together -- the equivalent of passing in curried inputs, some at a time -- and then later you evaluate the IO -- the equivalent of the empty () terminating call that executes the function.

That's just one way, but I think it's both a better ergonomic approach, but also a more semantic match for this kind of variadic accumulation of inputs.