Need a pretty "apply"

[tylerperkins]

I think the apply function is a natural candidate to be replaced by a pretty symbol. It is a higher-order function that one often uses to shape the structure of code, like partial or comp. Consider that many Clojure functions are variadic, yet are often needed to operate on a collection: concat, +, str, distinct?, etc. The use of apply is so common, you eventually think of it as just a different way of calling a function, like Python's * (splice), or JS2015's ... (spread) operator.

May I suggest the ellipsis symbol …. That's Option-; on a Mac.

[zjhmale]

what about the left arrow symbol ⇒? i think ellipsis symbol does not show the meaning of apply function directly.

[tylerperkins]

I like … because it is visually distinct from anything else (except "_", which cannot be used as a function or macro name), and it's similar to the "spread" operator from JavaScript and Java. I don't really see ⇒ as reminiscent of apply, and it has the problem of being similar to the threading symbols.

How about this: The association should really be with Clojure's version of "spread", the ampersand &, but inverted: ⅋. That idea is really starting to grow on me. Alternatively, you could base the symbol on the letter a, for "apply", say alpha, ∝, which is a greek letter like lambda, and kind of reminiscent of the comp symbol, both of which have to do with functions.

[zjhmale]

∝ looks good to me 😄 , how about the single greek letter ∝ to represent apply function ?

[tylerperkins]

I'd be curious about what other Clojure programmers prefer. Alpha (∝) is good. I guess my favorite is ⅋, because apply inserts a list of trailing function arguments, while & destructures a list of trailing function parameters.