Note that dot product (for example) is designed such that its v should have a minimal rank (mostly rank 0, but rank 1 can sometimes be useful, and rank 2 is plausible).
We mostly notice when we want exceptions and it's easy to gloss over stuff that's working well. Take care, -- Raul On Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 11:32 PM Elijah Stone <[email protected]> wrote: > > I think that primitives should try to handle as highly-ranked an array > they can. I find it much more simple and regular to explicitly lower the > rank of a verb than to recreate the high-rank version of the algorithm > myself. > > I had a similar issue recently with #.: it is effectively a trailing-axis > reduction, and I wanted to reduce the leading axis, so I had to write > #.&.|:. I would much rather have written #., and used #."1 if I > explicitly wanted to reduce the last axis. > > I do not know if this argument is strong or objective, but: in general, if > primitives have natively high rank, then lower-ranked versions can be > produced in a uniform manner; whereas if primitives are low-ranked, then > distinct high-ranked versions must be produced for each relevant > primitive. > > -E > > On Tue, 26 Oct 2021, Henry Rich wrote: > > > First: rank "_1 is shorthand for "_1"_ . Every verb must have > > nonnegative rank. > > > > Second: it seems to me that the current definition of I. is more > > convenient for some things (where f@I. is used) and less for others > > (where I.@, is used). Is there any strong objective argument one way or > > the other? > > > > Henry Rich > > > > On 10/26/2021 1:56 AM, Elijah Stone wrote: > >> On Mon, 25 Oct 2021, Marshall Lochbaum wrote: > >> > >>> If I. combined the two, functions written with the high-rank version > >>> would usually fail in this case. Better to make the programmer > >>> remember an idiom than to provide an incomplete version of it. > >> > >> No definition could be less amenable to high-rank computation than the > >> current one. And for code which does want to go that mile, "_1 is > >> much nicer (IMHO). > >> > >> -E > >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > > > > -- > > This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. > > https://www.avg.com > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > 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
