title: 'Auxiliary' function in Haskell
body: <p>My lecturer at the moment has a strange habit I've not seen before, I'm wondering if this is a Haskell standard or a quirk of his programming style.</p>
  
  <p>Basically, he'll often do thing such as this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>functionEx :: String -&gt; Int
  functionEx s = functionExA s 0
  
  functionExA :: String -&gt; Int -&gt; Int
  functionExA s n = --function code
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>He calls these 'auxiliary' functions, and for the most part the only advantage I can see to these is to make a function callable with fewer supplied arguments. But most of these are hidden away in code anyway and in my view adding the argument to the original call is much more readable.</p>
  
  <p>As I said, I'm not suggesting my view is correct, I've just not seen it done like this before and would like to know if it's common in Haskell.</p>