Thanks for those links.
There seems to be a slight bug in Aliases.ijs - Determinant returns the
permanent rather than the determinant.
On 11/19/2017 09:52 PM, Arthur Anger wrote:
Andrew--
Yes, there are readable names that you may use for J's primitive
graphic-character definitions. Some are defined in the scripts automatically
loaded at startup.
Names for the character primitives can be had by loading:
http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/File:Primitiv.ijs .
Translations between these names and characters are discussed in:
http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Primitives_to_Mnemonics
This script also allows for defining mnemonics which are Unicode characters in
the spirit of APL.
My extension of the above definition process is at:
http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/File:Aliases.ijs
For describing many of the operations, this version offers some abbreviations and
alternate names; you may add others. This script alters the former
"primitives" script to enforce the relevant monadic or dyadic interpretation of
different verbs which employ the same ambivalent graphic symbol; they yield syntax or
domain errors rather than unexpected values when used with the wrong number of arguments.
As for tacit definitions, I don't see them as being "the heart" of J, but I do
use them frequently. A related tricky aspect is the use of Fork and Hook for routing
arguments to their destinations; I tend to wish that visible symbols had been provided
to denote their use.
Welcome to the J-world. One writer claims that it can give you immediate
results--and a lifetime of exploration.
--Art Anger
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Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2017 14:15:32 -0500
From: Andrew Dabrowski <[email protected]>
...
6. In the age of unicode, why /not/ use the special symbols from APL?
We could use the J expressions to type them, but wouldn't the APL
symbols look and read better? As it is J might be said to have the
worst of both worlds.
7. Has anyone made up a set of aliases for beginners which provides
natural language based names for the operations? A newbie could slowly
add the abbreviations to his vocabulary, as one does with e.g. emacs.
8. The failure to clearly distinguish at the syntactic level between
monadic and dyadic verbs, along with the laconic culture, makes tacit
definitions almost unreadable for a beginner. This could have been
avoided, but it seems the drive to score an eagle won out over the
desire for clarity.
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