[Haskell-cafe] Partial Application

[Philippe de Rochambeau]

Hello,

my original query concerning partial application was triggered by the  
following statement from Thomson's "The Craft of Functional  
Programming", p. 185:

"
multiplyUC :: (Int, Int) -> Int
multiplyUC (x,y) = x * y

multiply :: Int -> Int -> Int
multiply x y = x * y

....

In the case of multiplications we can write expression like multiply 2".

When I read this, I thought that you could partially apply "multiply"  
by typing "multiply 2" at the ghci prompt. However, this generated an  
error:

<interactive>:1:0:
     No instance for (Show (Int -> Int))
       arising from use of `print' at <interactive>:1:0-9
     Possible fix: add an instance declaration for (Show (Int -> Int))
     In the expression: print it
     In a 'do' expression: print it


After reading http://www.haskell.org/hawiki/PartialApplication, I  
figured out that you can only partially apply declared functions, in  
source files, not at the prompt:

multiplyBy2 = multiply 2

Now "multiplyBy2 50" yields "100"



On page 22 of "Programming in Haskell", Howard says that you can do  
the following partial application of the curried function add': add'  
1 :: Int -> Int, where add and add' are declared as


add :: (Int,Int) -> Int
add (x,y) = x + y

add' :: Int -> (Int -> Int)
add' x y = x + y

However, typing "add' 1" at the prompt generates an error. If I add  
the following to my source file

addOne = add' 1

typing addOne 5" at the prompt yields "6", which is the right answer.

Cheers,

phiroc