[Haskell-cafe] Re: What's the deal with Clean?

[Richard O'Keefe]

>>>>
>>>> One of this differences between Haskell and Clean I did not see  
>>>> mentioned in
>>>> this discussion is that Clean does not allow so-called partial
>>>> parametrisation. I.e. all function calls have to be fully saturated

I think there may be a misunderstanding here.

Beware: I haven't used Clean in a while.

(1) Clean didn't have sections.
     This is no big deal.  Clean does have "flip" in StdFunc.
     (x +)	=> (+) x
     (+ y)	=> (flip (+)) y

(2) Clean requires saturated *DEFINITIONS*.
     If you declare
	f :: A B C -> D
     then each rule you give for f must have exactly three arguments.
     If you declare
	f :: A -> B -> C -> D
     then each rule you give for f must have exactly one argument.
     See section 3.7 of the Clean 2.1 language report.

This has no consequences for how you can *apply* such a
function.  Section 3.7.1 of the report is explicit:

	In CLEAN all symbols (functions and constructors) are
	defined with fixed arity.  However, in an application
	it is of course allowed to apply them to an arbitrary
	number of arguments.  A curried application of a
	function is an application of a function with a number
	of arguments which is less than its arity (note that
	in CLEAN the arity of a function can be derived from
	its type).  With the aid of the predefined internal
	function _AP a curried function applied on the
	required number of  arguments is transformed into an
	equivalent uncurried function application.  The type
	axiom's (sic.) of the CLEAN type system include for
	all  s defined with arity n the equivalence of
	s::(t1->(t2->(...(tn->tr)...)) with
	s::t1 t2 ... tn -> tr.