Dear Fred,
Here is a dictionary entry that might help you to understand:
Dictionary
esoteric |ˌesəˈterik| |ˌˈɛsəˌtɛrɪk| |ˈɛsəˌtɛrɪk| |
ˈiːsə-|
adjective
intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of
people with a specialized knowledge or interest : esoteric
philosophical J language debates.
DERIVATIVES
esoterically |-(ə)lē| |ˌˈɛsəˌtɛrək(ə)li| adverb
esotericism |-ˈterəˌsizəm| |ˈɛsəˌtɛrəˈsɪzəm| noun
esotericist |-ˈterəsist| |ˈɛsəˌtɛrəsəst| noun
ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from Greek esōterikos, from esōterō,
comparative of esō ‘within,’ from es, eis ‘into.’ Compare
with exoteric .
Thesaurus
esoteric
adjective
in attendance were more than fifty J programmers brimming with
esoteric knowledge abstruse, obscure, arcane, recherché, rarefied,
recondite, abstract; enigmatic, inscrutable, cryptic, Delphic;
complex, complicated, incomprehensible, opaque, impenetrable,
mysterious.
On Thu 17/Aug/2006, at 8:36 AM, Fred Bone wrote:
On 16 Aug 2006 at 11:15, Randy MacDonald said:
Surely you don't expect a dictionary to supply all legal
sentences, do
you?
I'm not one to speculate on what people don't say about their
interactions
with J, so I don't know how you found the issue.
I'm not of the "J doesn't do what I expect, therefore it has a bug"
school. When J does something I don't expect, it is more often my own
limited view of J that needs expanding. I'd consider myself
excessively
arrogant if I felt otherwise.
Do you respond like this to all suggestions for documentation
improvements?
I've been programming for over 35 years, in a wide variety of
languages
(I lost count years ago). I have seen a similarly wide variety of
language documentation. I am accustomed to being able to find
things in
the doc, if they are there. I am prepared to work at it, but do
occasionally miss the glaringly obvious.
I thought I had indeed seen an example of the construct I needed, so I
asked (on the beta list, because that was where I was reporting the
doc
bug that I found while looking) whether it was there, or whether I was
mistaken in believing it was there. Apparently the latter was the
case.
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