I can never seem to keep straight which primitive joins/assembles data in which way, and so I created a "cheatsheet" for myself of the patterns involved. In so doing, however, I noticed an interesting quasi-anomaly that I was curious about:
"Append" (,) and "laminate" (,:) join various combinations of tables and lists of differing sizes using fill characters as necessary to fill out the joined/assembled data. Why does "stitch" (,.) NOT use (or is incapable of using) fill characters in the same way? In other words, what is there about stitching two tables, a table and a list, or two lists where differing sizes are involved that prohibits filling to match sizes? Why is "stitch" different? Is there some underlying structure or meaning involved? I mean, I could manually do some "filling", and then I could use "stitch"--why can it not happen automatically? I'm just trying to learn more about how J works, and I was curious about this seeming "anomaly" in the patterns for joining data. (The patterns are quite organized, and even this "anomaly" has a pattern.) Thanks for any insights! Harvey ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
