Why does Clojure not have an any? or any-pred? function?

Question

It seems like I must be missing some obvious commonly used idiom, but the absence of these two functions seems a bit perplexing to me. There is some but it returns nil instead of False, why not an any? function?

Answer 1

some is considered to be the same as any? would be if it existed. there is a closely named function not-any? which just calls some under the hood:

(source not-any?)
(def
...
not-any? (comp not some))

you could simply write any as:

(def any? (comp boolean some))

patches welcomed :) just fill out and mail in a contributor agreement first.

your point about the naming is especially true considering the not-any? function has been included since 1.0

(defn any? [pred col] (not (not-any? pred col)))
(any? even? [1 2 3])
true
(any? even? [1  3])
false

I guess nobody got around to sending in the patch? (hint hint nudge nudge)

When using any code based on some (not-any? calls some under the hood) be careful to match the types of the pred and the col or use a pred that catches the type exceptions

(if (some odd? [2 2 nil 3]) 1 2)
No message.
  [Thrown class java.lang.NullPointerException]

ps: this example is from clojure 1.2.1