Have you tried Elixir? I've not learned its Erlang base, so I can't tell my Erlang from my Elixir, but... in Elixir you can Enum.at(list,n), which with: at =

Have you tried Elixir? I've not learned its Erlang base, so I can't tell my Erlang from my Elixir, but... in Elixir you can Enum.at(list,n), which with: at = &(Enum.at(list,&1) Could simplify into: at.(n) If that doesn't suit I'm sure some equally simple such thing could create exactly what you're after. (As I understand it, various kinds of metaprogramming are an intended base element of the language itself.)