In an effort to get some level of familiarity with J I am working
through a number of the excellent examples and essays.
I notice that a number of them have some relatively minor problems, some
of which seem to be platform dependent, some are potentially minor
syntax problems (which are not always so minor if you are not yet good
with the language).
An example of the latter is in the "Building Applications" lab example.
The line
DAT=: 'm' fread jpath '~system\examples\data\sales.dat'`
has a trailing tie which does something I do not understand to DAT - it
does not seem to be a noun or a derived verb anymore. In particular,
$DAT returns a domain error, while DAT by itself returns what appears to
be a boxed array, although trying to unbox it returns a domain error as
well. So I have no clue what sort of object DAT has become. The
statement works correctly, returning an array, if you delete the tie
character.
So, two questions: First, is this the right forum to report such minor
errors? Second, can anybody explain why that trailing tie character
puts DAT in some odd state?
Thanks.
Tom
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