Re^4: Near-free function currying in Perl

My experience with function attributes is limited but what about something like this:

sub foo ($$$) : curry {
    ...
}

or if the prototypes and attributes dont get along as they should.

sub foo : curry($$$) {
    ...
}

That would be my prefered notation, it is was possible.

[dragonchild]

I like

sub foo : required($$$) {
    ...
}

That allows more than just currying to use the attribute. Also, you can then do something like:

sub foo : required( address, city, state, zip ) {
    ...
}

That way, you can do both parameter validation and named-parameter currying (as per Limbic~Region's comment below). Plus, you're specifying the API, which would allow for something like doxygen to document your API.

An even nicer thing would be to combine this idea of a required() attribute to methods, meaning that you could do something like:

package Foo;

sub new
  : required( attr1, attr2 )
  : optional( attr3 )
{
    ...
}

This would behave like Class::MethodMaker and create the attr1(), attr2(), and attr3() mutators, plus require that the first two be passed in to the constructor.

It wouldn't be too hard to come up with a list of useful function/method attributes. Off the top of my head, I can see multiple uses for:

• required
• optional
• deprecated

[stvn]

Attribute::Curried

It seems someone has betten us to it by about 2 years.

[dragonchild]

Maybe we can expand it to work with optional parameters and named parameters ... *ponders* It's very similar to what I posted below. Hrmm ... maybe we can come up with a spec that would meet everyone's needs?