Programming Languages: Concepts and Implementation

8.3 Currying

Currying refers to converting an n-ary function into one that accepts only one argument and returns a function, which also accepts only one argument and returns a function that accepts only one argument, and so on. This technique was introduced by Moses Schönfinkel, although the term was coined by Christopher Strachey in 1967 and refers to logician Haskell Curry. For now, we can think of a curried function as one that permits transparent partial function application (i.e., without calling papply1 or papply). In other words, a curried function (or a function written in curried form, as discussed next) can be partially applied without calling papply1 or papply. Later, we see that a curried function is not being partially applied at ...