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What are advantages and disadvantages of “point free” style in functional programming?

When I was in university I had to learn haskell. In one of my classes we learned how to use point free functions. Besides the academic point of view is there any advantage of programming in a point free style?

In terms of efficiency is there any difference? Isn’t point free more hard to understand in applications with a lot lines of code?

Answer 1

Once you’re used to it, it’s clearer and cleaner, as long as you don’t take it too far.

Perhaps ((not.).) isn’t as clear as \f x y = not (f x y) to you, but

munge = this . that . other

should be clearer than

munge x = this (that (other x)))

Your lecturers taught you pointfree to make you a better programmer, not because it’s best to obfuscate your code, so you should use it when it helps.

The motivation isn’t efficiency, it’s clarity of thought, purpose and expression.