Just so it's clear, I wasn't accusing R.E. Boss of plagiary, I was making a point by way of analogy.
And I agree with you about reinventing the wheel (that's what the paragraph about Perl was trying to convey). I don't think that issue is limited to sequential machines though. J programs are shorter than most other languages'; the set of all short programs is smaller than the set of all long programs. Hence, even with a random program generator, repetition in J will be more common than repetition in a less concise language. That repetition is even more evident in directed discussions about frequently encountered problems amongst a similarly-minded community. Add the fact that each primitive in J is designed to a purpose and well spelled out, and you lots of round wheels. Interesting that you used the term "sequential machine", though. While browsing the Forum archives for mentions of \.&.|. , I came across http://www.jsoftware.com/pipermail/general/2000-July/003745.html Which specifically correlates ~/\. (&.|.) with finite state machines. That made me wonder if dyadic ;: (finite state machine) could provide an amenable solution. I can't come up with anything even close; can anyone else? Or is a "sequential machine" not the same as an FSM? Is it more akin to a Turing machine (i.e. a version of ;: that can be instructed to move backwards)? -Dan ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
