title: Understanding Clojure partial
body: <p>I'm reading the Clojure Programming book. I'm at an example about partials and it go like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>(def only-strings (partial filter string?))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The thing is, if the i write the next function:</p>
  
  <pre><code>(defn only-strings [x] (filter string? x))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can have the same result:</p>
  
  <pre><code>user=&gt; (only-strings [6 3 "hola" 45 54])
  ("hola")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What are the benefits of using a partial here? Or the example is just to simple to show them? Could somebody please give me an example where a partial would be useful. Many thanks.</p>