Re: [stack] Fwd: [Factor-talk] Currying cleave/spread combinators

On Feb 3, 2009, at 12:17 PM, John Nowak wrote:

> Factor's higher order nature, however, has enabled (required?)
> several dozen words that all do really boring things.

Perhaps I should clarify this. If Factor did not have quotations, it  
would be sensible to offer an n-ary "cleave" syntax, "spread" syntax,  
etc. For example, we might write this:

    [ + ] [ - ] 2bi

As this:

    (| + , - |)

I've already proposed a few such combinators lately so I won't repeat  
myself here.

The problem with doing this in Factor is that they can only be used  
with constant functions; you can't use them with functions passed in  
as quotations. Accordingly, you'd still need the usual pile of  
combinators.

- John