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Currying subtraction
I started my first haskell project that is not from a tutorial, and of course I stumble on the simplest things.
I have the following code:
moveUp y = modifyMVar_ y $ return . (+1)
moveDn y = modifyMVar_ y $ return . (-1)
It took me some time to understand why my code wouldn't compile: I had used (-1) which is seen as negative one. Bracketting the minus doesn't help as it prefixes it and makes 1 its first parameter.
In short, what is the point free version of this?
dec :: Num a => a -> a
dec x = x - 1
I believe you want the conveniently-named subtract
function, which exists for exactly the reason you've discovered:
subtract :: Num a => a -> a -> a
the same as flip (-)
.
Because -
is treated specially in the Haskell grammar, (- e)
is not a section, but an application of prefix negation. However, (subtract exp)
is equivalent to the disallowed section.
If you wanted to write it pointfree without using a function like subtract
, you could use flip (-)
, as the Prelude
documentation mentions. But that's... kinda ugly.
You can use the subtract
function (which is in the Standard Prelude).
moveDn y = modifyMVar_ y $ return . (subtract 1)
You can also use flip to reorder the parameters that -
takes.
moveDn y = modifyMVar_ y $ return . (flip (-) 1)
If the above-mentioned subtract
is too verbose, you could try something like (+ (-1))
or (-1 +)
.