Anssi Seppälä wrote:
> My "hate" today is:
> ".'2.5E-2'
> |ill-formed number
> | ".'2.5E-2'
> 0 ".'2.5E-2'
> 0.025
I never use the monad ". when I just want to convert strings to numbers. The
major reason is exactly your "hate": the dyad
converts - to _ but the monad doesn't. Of course, this is the correct
behavior for the monad, which is a J interpreter (and I
would be very unhappy with a J interpreter that substituted _s for my -s), but
I'm glad the dyad has specifically extended this
convenience.
Actually, the very fact that monad ". is a J interpreter is a disincentive
to using it to convert (presumably user-entered)
strings into numbers. What if the sneaky user entered 2!:55]0 or worse,
1!:55 'C:\*.*' ? Yikes.
-Dan
PS: It may surprise some that the constant 2.5E_2 (capital E) is actually
permissible, in contradiction to §Constants. So if
you *really* wanted to use the monad instead of the dyad, you could write, e.g.
".@:('-'&=`(,:&'_')}) '2.5E-2' .
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