Re: [stack] Fwd: [Factor-talk] cleave, 2cleave, and spread

On Apr 3, 2008, at 6:24 PM, William Tanksley, Jr wrote:

> Slava, the author/primary author of the Factor language, writes:
>
> - cleave takes one value, and an array of quotations. It applies each
> quotation to the value; the value is removed from the stack  
> afterwards.
> - 2cleave takes two values, and an array of quotations. it applies
> each quotation to the two values; the two values are removed from the
> stack afterwards.

While cleave/2cleave do seem to form a possible base, they are  
impossible to type. That's not to say cleave isn't convenient, but for  
convenience alone you can always offer it as a macro that translates a  
statically-known list of functions to the same thing in terms of some  
simpler core set. I'd argue that using cleave with arrays not known at  
compile-time is very difficult for a human to reason about anyway and  
likely should be avoided in all cases.

- John