# On functional programming in classical languages

AS3 is certainly not strictly classical (there's a Class::prototype object for Pete's sake!), but it's got a lot of the classical garb. Anyway, today I was rummaging around in a class in our codebase called FunctionUtils and I decided, whilst fixing a few things, why not add a couple of the fun functional constructs?!

## Function::schönfinkeling

Schönfinkeling, or more commonly, currying a function, has mathematical roots. Essentially, you define a function:

That's right! A function that returns a function. It's easiest to understand using the classic example of addition:
function add(a:int, b:int):int { return a + b; } add(10, 5); // 15

Now let's Schönfinkel this function!

var addTen:Function = curry(add, 10); addTen(5); // 15

See what I did there? my curry() function mapped . This is pretty straightforward in JavaScript, but there are some limits in AS3. Here's what I came up with.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 public function curry(functionRef:Function, ... args):Function { // nothing to curry if (0 == args.length) { return functionRef; }   return function (... arguments):* { return functionRef.apply(null, args.concat(arguments)); }; }

Simple right?! One big limitation here is that it returns an "untyped" function, in that where you once had add(a,b), you now have addTen(... args):*. Not a huge deal, of course, I'm not sure any language comes equipped to deal with typing this kind of thing (feel free to prove me wrong!).

## Function::memoize

I'll be honest, I've used memoization more times than I probably have had need for. Seriously. It's so cool I use it to do stupid things. But that's okay! Typically, memoization is a fancy word for caching return values from a function. Here's an AS3 implementation:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 public function memoize(functionRef:Function):Function { var cache:Dictionary = new Dictionary(true);   return function (argument:*):* { if (null == cache[argument]) { cache[argument] = functionRef.call(null, argument); }   return cache[argument]; }; }

There are a couple of things here that are unfortunate.

Firstly, this really only works with single valued functions, i.e. . There's not a great way (that I'm aware of) to cache by "a bunch of objects". Secondly, if your function returns null for some input, the value is essentially not cached. Dictionary::hasOwnProperty really only works for string keys, and our key could be an object. Thirdly, flash.utils.Dictionary isn't a big fan of Function keys, so memoize(memoize(f)) may do something crazy.

That's it! Quick post!