curriable

Convert any method to be curriable with placeholder support

Usage no npm install needed!

<script type="module">
  import curriable from 'https://cdn.skypack.dev/curriable';
</script>

README

curriable

Curry any function with placeholder support

Table of contents

Summary

curriable provides a curry method that is highly performant with a small footprint (582 bytes minified+gzipped). You can call the method with any combination of parameters (one at a time, all at once, or any number in between), and placeholders are supported.

If fn is the curried function and _ is the placeholder value, the following are all equivalent:

  • fn(1)(2)(3)
  • fn(1)(2, 3)
  • fn(1, 2)(3)
  • fn(1, 2, 3)
  • fn(_, 2, 3)(1)
  • fn(_, _, 3)(1)(2)
  • fn(_, _, 3)(1, 2)
  • fn(_, 2)(1)(3)
  • fn(_, 2)(1, 3)
  • fn(_, 2)(_, 3)(1)

Usage

You can use the default import:

import curry from "curriable";

const fn = curry((a, b, c) => [a, b, c]);

console.log(fn("a", curry.__, "c")("b")); // ["a", "b", "c"]

const original = curry.uncurry(fn);

console.log(original("a")); // ["a", undefined, undefined]

Or the named imports:

import { __, curry, uncurry } from "curriable";

const fn = curry((a, b, c) => [a, b, c]);

console.log(fn("a", __, "c")("b")); // ["a", "b", "c"]

const original = uncurry(fn);

console.log(original("a")); // ["a", undefined, undefined]

API

curry

Curry the fn provided for any combination of arguments passed, until all required arguments have been passed.

import { curry } from 'curriable';

function curry<Fn extends (...args: any[]) => any>(
    fn: Fn, 
    arity: number = fn.length
) => Curried<Fn>;

arity defaults to be the length provided by fn.length, but be aware this can cause unusual behavior with default parameters or use of rest parameters. See the documentation on Function.length for more details.

uncurry

import { uncurry } from 'curriable';

Get the underlying standard method that was curried using `curry`.

function uncurry<Fn extends (...args: any[]) => any>(
    fn: Curried<Fn>
) => Fn;

isPlaceholder

import { isPlaceholder } from 'curriable';

Is the value passed a `curriable` placeholder.

function isPlaceholder(value: any): value is Placeholder

Rest parameters

console.log((...args) =>{}.length); // 0 arity computed

When using rest with curried functions, you should pass a second parameter to explicitly declare the correct arity:

const fn = (...args) => [a, b, c];
const curried = curry(fn, 3);

console.log(curried("a")("b")("c")); // ["a", "b", "c"]

Default parameters

console.log(function(a, b = 1, c) {}.length); // 1 arity computed

Default parameters are very rare use-case with curried functions, but it is possible to trigger them if you declare an explicit arity and explicitly pass undefined for that parameter:

const fn = (a, b = 1, c) => [a, b, c];
const curried = curry(fn, 3);

console.log(curried("a")(undefined)("c")); // ["a", 1, "c"]

Yes, this is weird, but it is very difficult (impossible?) to distinguish between a parameter being undefined through not being called yet in the curry chain vs being undefined by not being provided an explicit value. Explicitly passing undefined provides that distinction.

Benchmarks

All values provided are the number of operations per second (ops/sec) calculated by the Benchmark suite. The same function was curried and tested passing each parameter individually, passing all at once, and using placeholders.

Benchmarks were performed on an i7 8-core Arch Linux laptop with 16GB of memory using NodeJS version 10.15.0.

Passing each parameter in curried calls

Library Operations / second
curriable 4,052,206
ramda 2,423,105
lodash 241,736

Passing all parameters in one call

Library Operations / second
curriable 18,106,685
ramda 10,718,796
lodash 9,052,257

Using placeholder parameters in curried calls

Library Operations / second
curriable 4,821,329
ramda 2,963,699
lodash 336,687

Development

Standard stuff, clone the repo and npm install dependencies. The npm scripts available:

  • benchmark => run the benchmark suite pitting curriable against other libraries in common use-cases
  • build => run rollup to build dist files
  • clean => run rimraf on the dist folder
  • dev => run webpack dev server to run example app (playground!)
  • lint => runs tslint against all files in the src folder
  • lint:fix => runs lint, fixing any errors if possible
  • prepublishOnly => run lint, typecheck, test:coverage, clean, and dist
  • release => run release-it for standard versions (requires global installation of release-it)
  • release:beta => run release-it for beta versions (requires global installation of release-it)
  • test => run jest test functions
  • test:coverage => run test, but with coverage checker
  • test:watch => run test, but with persistent watcher
  • typecheck => run tsc on all code in src