Functions

Introduction

This article discusses function declaration in Ela.

Declaration

Functions in Ela are first class values and are declared using regular binding syntax like so:

sum x y = x+y

Functions are curried, therefore, the declaration above is equivalent to the following declaration:

sum x = sum'
         where sum' y = x+y

Ela also supports anonymous functions syntax. The function above can be also written like so:

sum = \x y - x+y

or like so (taking into account that the function is curried):

sum = \x - \y - x+y

Functions in Ela can be declared using both let and where bindings in local scope and don't require any keywords at top level.

Headers

Functions in Ela (as well as other bindings) can have an optional header, used to specify attributes such as private (not included in module export list), qualified (included in module export list but always requires qualified access) and nowarnings (suppress all warnings):

sum # private
sum x = x+y

Operators

Strictly speaking, Ela doesn't have a concept of operators. Instead, it recognizes two types of idenfiers for functions - a regular type (which is a standard Ela identifier) which is used for functions called in prefix notation by default, and a symbolic identifier which is used by default in infix (or postfix) notations. Therefore, declaration of operators is effectively the same as declaration of functions:

(+.) x y = x+y

This function is basically an equivalent to the sum function shown in the previous section. The only difference is that by default it is applied using infix notation:

x +. y

Application Notation

Prefix, postfix and infix notations can be used for any functions in Ela. For example, operators can be applied using prefix notation:

(+) 2 2

And even postfix notation:

2+

The latter code partially applies an operator +. However for unary operators it will result in saturation. //br Functions also can be called using infix and postfix notations:

2 `sum` 2
or even 
2 `sum`

which has effectively the same effect as a right section for + shown above.

You can also declare functions and operators using all these notations:

sum x y = x+y //Prefix
x +. y = x+y //Infix
x `sum` y = x+y
x+++ = x+x //Postfix

Pattern Matching

Functions in Ela can be defined using pattern matching. In such a case a function will have a separate body for each of the match entries. A typical example is a known map function:

map _ [] = []
map f (x::xs) = f x :: map f xs

Here we have a function for two arguments that accepts a function (as a first argument) and a list (as a second argument). A list is deconstructed using head/tail pattern. One can also use guards in functions (in the same manner as in bindings):

filter _ [] = []
filter p (x::xs) | p x  = x :: filter p xs
                 | else = filter p xs

An else clause is required.