Anonymous Functions

Many functions in the standard API expect function pointer as parameters.

For example:

// Function 'double' defined here - used only once
fn double(x) { 2 * x }

// Function 'square' defined here - again used only once
fn square(x) { x * x }

let x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

// Pass a function pointer to 'double'
let y = x.map(Fn("double"));

// Pass a function pointer to 'square'
let z = y.map(Fn("square"));

Sometimes it gets tedious to define separate functions only to dispatch them via single function pointers – essentially, those functions are only ever called in one place.

This scenario is especially common when simulating object-oriented programming ([OOP]).

// Define functions one-by-one
fn obj_inc(x, y) { this.data += x * y; }
fn obj_dec(x) { this.data -= x; }
fn obj_print() { print(this.data); }

// Define object
let obj = #{
    data: 42,
    increment: Fn("obj_inc"),           // use function pointers to
    decrement: Fn("obj_dec"),           // refer to method functions
    print: Fn("obj_print")
};

Syntax

Anonymous functions have a syntax similar to Rust’s closures (they are not the same).

|param 1, param 2, … , param n| statement

|param 1, param 2, … , param n| { statements… }

No parameters:

|| statement

|| { statements… }

Rewrite Using Anonymous Functions

The above can be rewritten using anonymous functions.

let x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

let y = x.map(|x| 2 * x);

let z = y.map(|x| x * x);

let obj = #{
    data: 42,
    increment: |x, y| this.data += x * y,   // one statement
    decrement: |x| this.data -= x,          // one statement
    print_obj: || {
        print(this.data);                   // full function body
    }
};

This de-sugars to:

// Automatically generated...
fn anon_fn_0001(x) { 2 * x }
fn anon_fn_0002(x) { x * x }
fn anon_fn_0003(x, y) { this.data += x * y; }
fn anon_fn_0004(x) { this.data -= x; }
fn anon_fn_0005() { print(this.data); }

let x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

let y = x.map(Fn("anon_fn_0001"));

let z = y.map(Fn("anon_fn_0002"));

let obj = #{
    data: 42,
    increment: Fn("anon_fn_0003"),
    decrement: Fn("anon_fn_0004"),
    print: Fn("anon_fn_0005")
};

Remember: though having the same syntax as Rust _closures_, anonymous functions are themselves
**NOT** real closures.

In particular, they capture their execution environment via [automatic currying](fn-closure.md).