Am Montag 05 Oktober 2009 11:52:17 schrieb Jon Fairbairn: > michael rice <[email protected]> writes: > > This is from Learn You A Haskell: <snip> > > The language (in CAPS) in the above two paragraphs seems to > > be backwards. > > It is. "5 is applied to that function" should be "5 is supplied to that > function" (or that function is applied to 5) and so on. It's a fairly > common error in writing this sort of thing¹, and given that the title > "Learn You A Haskell" is totally ungrammatical, hardly seems surprising. > > > In the first paragraph, since functions are > > conventionally "applied" to parameters shouldn't it read > > something like THE PARTIALLY APPLIED FUNCTION IS THEN > > APPLIED TO the 5? Or is the terminology different for > > Haskell,
That would be correct but awkward. IMO it would be better to say that 5 is then supplied (or fed) to (the partially applied function). I tend to feed arguments to functions if I don't want to apply a function to an argument. > > No, but Haskell does have a lot of non-native users of English among its > users. I'm not sure that's relevant for this kind of error. I think it's more a lack of familiarity with mathematical terminology. > > > [1] A pet peeve of mine is "x supports y" being used backwards (as in > "our application supports windows Vista", which would only make sense if > it were something like a system tool that stopped Vista crashing. Or if Microsoft uses the profits from App X to compensate deficits incurred by Vista. Or if the application sports banners "Vista is great! Get you a Vista today!" :D But seriously, yes, it's annoying. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [email protected] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
