Linda, does your tree display explain the difference for you? I have tried to show what I mean with trees. The only word that may be missing is "isolated": Trains are isolated sequences of verbs, and parentheses pairs can induce isolation. In the first example the first 3 stars are forced into a single chain by the rightmost parens, but in the second example the rightmost 3 stars are not isolated from the set of 3 in the middle, which become a continuation of the rightmost train.
9!:2'' 5 9!:3]4 (***(***)(***)) ┌─ * ├─ * │ ┌─ * ──┤ │ ┌─ * │ ├───┼─ * └───┤ └─ * │ │ ┌─ * └───┼─ * └─ * ((***)(***)***) ┌─ * ┌─┼─ * │ └─ * │ │ ┌─ * ──┼─┼─ * │ └─ * │ │ ┌─ * └─┼─ * └─ * On Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 8:49 PM, Linda Alvord <lindaalv...@verizon.net> wrote: > I'm still looking for the phrase or concept that explains the difference > between these two. Why are they producing different results? > > 3(***(***)(***))4 > 35831808 > > 3((***)(***)***)4 > 429981696 > > If you grew up in the early years using APL, an idea might come to mind. > > Linda > > -- (B=) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm