potential side effects, probably. -- Raul
On Fri, Aug 4, 2017 at 12:41 AM, Louis de Forcrand <ol...@bluewin.ch> wrote: > Just wondering why > > isgerund=: 3 : 0 :: 0 > y@.] > 1 > ) > > isn't an acceptable test for “gerundality”? > > I also kind of agree with Bill, in the sense that J doesn’t seem to have been > designed from the ground up (or halfway up for that matter) to facilitate > programmatically building code / functions with gerunds. Gerunds seem > to have been designed more for @. conditionals and sending multiple verbs > to adverbs like }., and using foreigns to manipulate them just seems kind > of “hacky” to me. > > This of course doesn’t mean that writing such code is impossible; > just that doing so leads to highly incomprehensible code (at least to the > casual J > programmer; sorry, but I haven’t the faintest idea how most of your wicked > tacit > wizardry works Pepe!) There are other languages such as Lisp whose lists and > highly regular syntax are designed specifically around that, or Haskell where > currying means that any function taking more than one argument is a higher- > order function returning another function; and J and APL’s syntaxes have other > fortes, notably terseness and remarkable idiomatic qualities. > > I feel that a big part of this comes from being able to write code that does > a lot > in a small space, with few parentheses, and with relatively simple parsing > rules; > and without the current noun-verb-adverb hierarchy, one of those three > qualities > would be lessened. > > Adding first-class verbs would kind of blur that hierarchy, and while they > are interesting > to have in unofficial interpreters I believe that the official interpreter > should stay > lean, efficient, relatively consistent, but especially practical to use for > the average > J programmer. So the question is wether the “generality” or “completeness” > added > by first-class verbs is worth the losses in other areas. > > All that to say that I agree with Bill that gerunds as they are now have been > designed > to be created with the tie conjunction, and while they are not perfect, they > are > an acceptable compromise. > > Louis > >> On 03 Aug 2017, at 19:31, Bill <bbill....@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> From my understanding, the reference shows the atomic representation of >> gerund. It does not advocate this a way to construct a gerund. moreover it >> is "foreign" conjunction. >> >> numbers can be converted from strings using foreign conjunction but it >> doesn't mean J encourages writing numbers using this method. >> >> IMO foreign conjunction is not a part of J core. >> >> >> Sent from my iPhone >> >> On 4 Aug, 2017, at 5:33 AM, Jose Mario Quintana >> <jose.mario.quint...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> " >>> In J dictionary, only tie conjunction >>> on verbs was mentioned to produce a gerund. >>> " >>> >>> I am afraid you might not be the only one who has reached such conclusion. >>> Nevertheless, in my opinion, it is a misconception that a gerund can only >>> be a list (of atomic representations) of verbs. Why? See [0] in the >>> context of [1]. >>> >>> [0] Atomic >>> http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/dx005.htm#1 >>> >>> [1] [Jprogramming] how to test for a gerund Roger Hui >>> http://www.jsoftware.com/pipermail/programming/2010-April/019178.html >>> >>> Mind you gerundYN is not bulletproof. >>> >>> >>> On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 5:46 AM, bill lam <bbill....@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>>> I am thinking of the opposite. In J dictionary, only tie conjunction >>>> on verbs was mentioned to produce a gerund. Boxed verbs had not been >>>> mentioned. Atomic representation of boxed verbs looks like that of >>>> gerund and therefore can work as gerund. IMO this is a backdoor >>>> provided by J implementation. >>>> >>>> Metadata could be attached to "real" gerunds that have ancestors which >>>> were results of verb`verb. All other nouns without this DNA would be >>>> regarded as non-gerund. >>>> >>>> Just my 2 cents. >>>> >>>> On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 3:57 PM, Marshall Lochbaum <mwlochb...@gmail.com> >>>> wrote: >>>>> Can I just point out that it's not too late to add some (documented) way >>>>> to box verbs/adverbs/conjunctions? These could be treated as gerunds by >>>>> everything that currently uses gerunds, and the interpreter can just >>>>> throw an error if anything attempts to actually unbox them. They are >>>>> much harder to confuse than the current gerunds, and will have far >>>>> better performance. >>>>> >>>>> This sounds like a radical divergence from the way J works now, but I >>>>> don't think it is in practice. Programmers would use some new >>>>> conjunction to replace (`), and provided they don't inspect the >>>>> structure of gerunds nothing else changes. I suppose there would need to >>>>> be a way to check what class of object a box contains, because unboxing >>>>> to check the type is not allowed. Gerunds would remain useful for >>>>> programmers who want to inspect functions or build them from scratch, >>>>> but would otherwise become obselete. >>>>> >>>>> Marshall >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
