Ken Iverson chose nearly all of the names so for the complete answer you're going to have to ask him :-). You can infer/guess the reasons by considering the entire nomenclature. My guesses are:
- Mnemonic (e.g. @ @. @: are named *atop*, *agenda*, *at*); - Short words (see above); - Meaningful; - Long and firmly established terminology (*compose* in mathematics); - More meaningful than long and firmly established terminology (*bond *rather than *curry*); - Puns (e.g. http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/APLQA.htm#pike) Iverson chose names carefully in his entire career. The following are two more stories about naming: http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/APLQA.htm#ravel, http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/APLQA.htm#lambda Two of the names were chosen by me, so I can tell you the reasons for the choices. APL has the system function ⎕av ("atomic vector") of the character set. When it came time to implement it in J, I assigned it to the symbol a. , meaning alphabet, because "alphabet" fits with the noun/verb/ etc. terminology from natural languages. (I also named "spelling error" :-) I also chose "key", because the defining statement for x u/.y items of x specify keys for corresponding items of y and u is applied to each collection of y having identical keys describes it so well. See also http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Key On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 5:04 AM, Steven Taylor <[email protected]> wrote: > is there a reason why the words "bond", "compose", "atop", "at" and "key" > were chosen? Is there a naming context, or a natural language example to > give a sense of how these words came to represent these ideas? > > For the most part, I think I understand what these verbs and conjunctions > do... it's just that I don't have a story behind them in the same way as I > might for something like boxing. i.e. > > real world places where you immediately apply the inverse of a preceding > function after doing an operation along the line of boxing (something that > I read that Ken asked once). Examples of this: > > - open fridge door, get milk, close fridge door > - surgeon: make incision, do operation, stitch up > > following up on some of these words. Here's what I got out of the oed > earlier: > > key: b. intr. Of a plant or animal: to be identified or assigned to a > particular taxon by the use of a key. Usu. with out. > > Any clues appreciated. > > thanks, > -Steven T. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
