Writing better apply and uniform function call syntax

If you take a look at apply function in Rebol, you may find its design less than optimal. Take a look at the example:

Function refinements can also be passed in the order they are specified by the arguments spec block. For example, we can see: >> ? append USAGE: APPEND series value /part length /only /dup count So in this example we use the /dup refinement: data: [456] apply :append [data 1 none none none true 3] probe data [456 1 1 1] Note that the refinement itself must be set to true.

So from append/dup data 1 3 we will get to apply :append [data 1 none none none true 3] . I don't know about you, but I find this design less than optimal. What if we could do it simpler? Like, for example: apply :append [data 1 /dup 3] ?

Apply

So how would we write such function? Look here, that's how:

apply: func [ "Apply a function to a block of arguments" fn [any-function!] "Function value to apply" args [block!] "Block of arguments (to quote refinement use QUOTE keyword)" /local refs vals val ][ refs: copy [] vals: copy [] set-val: [set val skip (append/only vals val)] parse args [ some [ 'quote set-val | set val refinement! (append refs to word! val) | set-val ] ] do compose [(make path! head insert refs 'fn) (vals)] ]

We will also define some simple function that we can use for testing:

f: func [ foo /bar baz ][ reduce [foo bar baz] ]

Now some explanations. Our apply function works by parsing block of arguments and building code from it. If it finds refirenments, it adds them to refs block and build builds path! from that block in the end. So when do apply :append [data 1 /dup 3] , it's turned into append/dup . Rest of values is collected into the vals block and on the last line code is build from these blocks and executed. In the case when we want to pass refinement as argument to a function, we will prefix it with the only keyword of our dialect: quote . See these examples of our f function, that show how it works:

>> apply :f [1 /bar 1] == [1 true 1] >> apply :f [quote /bar] == [/bar false none] >> apply :f [quote /bar /bar 1] == [/bar true 1]

So that's it. It's easier to use and when you look at the source of Rebol's apply , it's also much simpler code.

UFCS

So what can we do with such function? For example write support for UFCS in Red.

There are different ways how to implement it in Red, for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to put arguments in block! . It can be done without it, but it will be much easier this way. You are of course free to rewrite the code in different matter.

Let's take a look at this code (it's a nonsense, but who cares):

head remove/part skip sort split form now charset "+-:/" 3 2

It's not very readable, right? So with our ufc function, we can turn it into:

ufc form now [ split [charset "+-:/"] sort [] skip [3] remove [/part 2] head [] ]

Better now, isn't it? So let's try to define such function:

ufc: function [ "Uniform Function Call for Red" data dialect ][ foreach [cmd args] dialect [ data: apply get cmd head insert/only args data ] data ]

That was easy, right? The function goes through command and argument pairs, inserts data into arguments and passes it to apply function. That's all there's to it.