Wow, a lot of great discussion. Almost a bit too much for me to grasp...I do see two or more nuggets that really address my issue.
As a side note, I'm familiar with the term currying from a friend who learned ML and Scheme quite some time ago. Not sure if that's the true origin, but it was a sufficiently different context from Python (or at least I thought) that I didn't want to rely on its meaning. I was also sufficiently unsure of it's _exact_ meaning, since we're talking about two slightly different models, that I didn't want to use the term for that reason as well. It's gratifying to know that it was a relevant concept afterall, the partial function application discussion notwithstanding. It's also gratifying to see such a strong community versed in functional programming styles. Although I've only started working with FP in Python, it's been a useful tool for making my programming simpler. The first useful nugget is the crystalization method. I spent some time thinking about the problem after I posted it and came up with the same workaround, in fact, the exact same syntax. It's a bit inelegant, but it gets the job done for what I want to do. I won't even attempt to take a position in the debate about whether Python should work by default the way it does or the way I want to use it. ;) Seems we have well-spoken advocates for both sides. The other nifty nugget is Kent's suggestion for using old-style Python default arguments to capture the variable value. Since it looks slightly more elegant I'm going to give it a shot. I have to say, I was happily surprised by the volume and quality of response to my little issue. Thanks everyone! Ted -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
