On this page we see: <quote href="http://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/declarations.htm";> An atom is defined to have rank 0; therefore, its shape is an array with 0 items, i. e. an empty array of rank 1. </quote>
My question about this quote is: why wouldn't an atom be a rank-1 array with 1 item of shape 1? An array with 0 items would have no data. An atom has data. I think an atom is more similar to a rank-1 array with shape 1 than a rank-1 array of shape 0. Continuing the the "Cells" section we see: <quote href="http://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/declarations.htm";> A rank-3 array of shape 4 5, 6 such as the one defined in C by the declaration int q[4][5][6]; can be thought of as an array of 4 elements, each with rank 2 and shape 5 6, or as a 4x5 array of elements, each with rank 1 and shape 6, or as a 4x5x6 array of rank-0 atoms. </quote> And my question is: on the bolded part: why not a 4x5x6 of rank-1 atoms? But I think I know the answer to this. It is because a 4x5x6 array already has "boxes" for data on each axis and we simply need to pop "boxless" atoms in. But understanding my second question does not make my first question any clearer. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
