I have a question regarding curry function.. I know that if I have this simple curry function:
const greeting = (greet) => {
return (name) => {
return `${greet} ${name}`;
};
};
I can call greeting('Hello')('John') and it will return Hello John.
Is there a way to make it flexible say between 1 parameter and 2 parameters, ex: with
the above greeting function, is there a way for me to call greeting('Hello') and greeting('Hello')('John') and it will return Hello and Hello John respectively?
I know that I can do it with greeting('Hello')() and greeting('Hello')('John') but I was just trying to avoid breaking changes because I already have a greeting method and want to extend it using curry function, so I want it to also accept greeting('Hello') without the extra () at the end...
thanks
I can think of only one option that works by coercing the curried function into a string. This won't change the return value but it will allow you to get the result you want depending on context.
const greeting = greet => Object.defineProperties(
name => `${greet} ${name}`, // curried
{
toString: {
value: () => greet,
},
valueOf: {
value: () => greet
}
}
)
console.log(typeof greeting("Hello")) // function, not string
console.log(`${greeting("Hello")}`) // note the string context
console.log(`${greeting("Hello")("World")}`)If you need the return value to actually toggle between a function and a string however, the answer is no.
In order for greeting("Hello")("John") to return a string, greeting("Hello") must return a function.
There is no way to tell within greeting() how the curried function is going to be called so you cannot detect whether or not to return a function or a string.
Think of it this way, greeting("Hello")("John") is just a short version of...
const fn = greeting("Hello")
// later or maybe never...
fn("John")
You simply don't know how, when or even if that curried function will be called.
Is there a way? Sure. But why? because won't that be "un-currying" it? And you will have to modify the function of-course.
You can always do something like this just get the output your asked for:
const greeting = (greet) => {
const split = greet.split(" ");
if(split.length > 1)
return `${split[0]} ${split[1]}`;
else return (name) => {
return `${greet} ${name}`;
};
};
If you use a helper function for currying, you can get a similar behavior automatically. For example, take the implementation at javascript.info/currying-partials
function curry(func) {
return function curried(...args) {
if (args.length >= func.length) {
return func.apply(this, args);
} else {
return function(...args2) {
return curried.apply(this, args.concat(args2));
}
}
};
}
You can define
const greeting = curry((greet, name) => `${greet} ${name}`)
and call
greeting("Hello", "John")
or
greeting("Hello")("John")