"Asymmetric" is standard English, but the others are a bit wooly. If you're mathematical, think 'noncommutative' for 'asymmetric'.
a + b is symmetric. a i. b is not. The idea is, if you were going to be applying this verb a bunch of times, which operand would be more likely to stay the same? That is the 'control information'. So, in a i. b we guess that the user is more likely going to want to do a bunch of searches in the same a than he is to do a bunch of searches for the same b in different a's. So we declare the a to be 'control information', and we put it on the left. It's not rigorous, yet it is important, and there are answers that many people will agree are correct. Henry Rich > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Terrence Brannon > Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 12:12 AM > To: General forum > Subject: [Jgeneral] "J for C Programmers" - asymmetry / > control /data discussed without definition? > > < quote url = http://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/more_verbs.htm > > if a dyadic verb is asymmetric, you should think of x as operating on > y, i. e. x is control information and y is data. > > < / quote > > > I don't know what "asymmetric", "control information" and "data" mean. > I'm pretty sure these concepts were not introduced previously. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see > http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
