Terrance Brannon, I think the J Primer would be weakened by the removal of the column-oriented addition example (10 20 +"1 m)
The Primer was among the first things I read about J. No, I didn't understand this example at first exposure, in the sense of being able to turn around and successfully apply rank-specification to verbs. This example does, however, succinctly demonstrate "this is how such a thing is done." Examples need not leave the reader without questions. In this case, the main point of the demonstration seems to be that adding numbers to columns is only a bit more syntactically involved than adding numbers to rows. That should be exposed at that point in the book. Readers who are genuinely curious about J will be intrigued, not repulsed, by what they see here. Also note that this is not in an early portion of the book, and that the main text of this section says: "Exactly how this works and what you can do with it is described in the next several sections." Tracy Harms ____________________________________________________________________________________ 8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
