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What is "point free" style (in Functional Programming)?

Asked 2009-06-03T12:28:18.870
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A phrase that I've noticed recently is the concept of "point free" style...

First, there was this question, and also this one.

Then, I discovered here they mention "Another topic that may be worth discussing is the authors' dislike of point free style."

What is "point free" style? Can someone give a concise explanation? Does it have something to do with "automatic" currying?

To get an idea of my level - I've been teaching myself Scheme, and have written a simple Scheme interpreter... I understand what "implicit" currying is, but I don't know any Haskell or ML.

functional-programming coding-style scheme pointfree
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Point free style means that the code doesn't explicitly mention it's arguments, even though they exist and are being used.

This works in Haskell because of the way functions work.

For instance:

myTake = take

returns a function that takes one argument, therefore there is no reason to explicit type the argument unless you just want too.

answered 2009-06-06T14:14:31.227

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