On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 11:13 PM, Alex Giannakopoulos <aeg...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote: > However, my concern was not the saving of 1k mem, but a deeper elegance > issue. I may be wrong here, I don't know, but I always prefer my data to > exist as only one copy, and as many references to it as are needed.
Ok, but what is a reference? >From a garbage collection perspective, J's data structures form a directed acyclic graph, but the language has no problems representing cyclic graphs. The reason for this is that data represents things for us. Numbers can be thought of as references. For example, that's what array indices are about, but I can think of a variety of other ways that data can be references. So what does it mean -- when our data is references -- to have only one copy of the data and as many references to it as needed? Personally, I tend to favor concepts of code simplicity and data integrity. But this is a very general topic. -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
