It is very common for functional programmers to write functions as a composition of other functions, never mentioning the actual arguments they will be applied to. For example, compare:. These functions perform the same operation, however, the former is more compact, and is considered cleaner. This style is particularly useful when deriving efficient programs by calculation and, in general, constitutes good discipline. It helps the writer and reader think about composing functions high level , rather than shuffling data low level. It is a common experience when rewriting expressions in pointfree style to derive more compact, clearer versions of the code -- explicit points often obscure the underlying algorithm. A common misconception is that the 'points' of pointfree style are the. This is wrong. The term originated in topology, a branch of mathematics which works with spaces composed of points, and functions between those spaces.

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Here is how the code would look:. The callbacks isTechnology , toBookView , ascByAuthor are small functions with intention-revealing names. They are not built in a point-free style. Our natural way of dealing with a problem is to break it into smaller pieces and then put everything back together. We break the bigger task up into several functions doing smaller tasks.
Functional programming in TypeScript/JavaScript
This is usefully especially in callbacks where a function is expected. Image you have a list of financial transactions. And now you want to get a list of positive transactions. Usually you can do this:. Or you can achieve point-free style by passing the function name to the filter callback. The benefits of point free is to make your code easy to read. Readability should be the top priority when you write any code for the long run. Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. But initially it looks like there is little benefits provided, because we are basically just replacing a inline function implementation with a function name.
Tacit programming , also called point-free style , is a programming paradigm in which function definitions do not identify the arguments or "points" on which they operate. Instead the definitions merely compose other functions, among which are combinators that manipulate the arguments. Tacit programming is of theoretical interest, because the strict use of composition results in programs that are well adapted for equational reasoning. The lack of argument naming gives point-free style a reputation of being unnecessarily obscure, hence the epithet "pointless style".