> From: david alis > > Forming tacit expressions with 1 : 0 offers two advantages. > Firstly, with 1 : 0 it's easy to modify a tacit program. > Secondly, tacit elements can be analysed to see that they > behave as expected. In this case +&.>/ is faulty. >
I'm always interested in exploring better ways of doing things but so far I'm not convinced that this methodology offers much benefit to me. Perhaps the benefits of the technique depend to some extent on the development environment/methodology/habits of the developer? To put my comments in perspective: I do most of my development using with a J session (.ijx) and one or more separate script windows (.ijs) open. If I want to build up the components of a tacit verb, I can do that in the script window as I tried to illustrate in a previous post: NB.==== script window ====== NB.*raul v sum numbers by unique key a=. [: ~. [ NB. nub of left b=. +&.>/ res=. a ,. b/. NB. put it together raul=: res/ f. NB. apply adverb / NB.========================== If I make a change to the script, I press Ctrl+w and the script is reloaded in my session and the new version of raul is defined in the session. I'm not sure how wrapping the above in 1 : 0 would help make it easier to modify the tacit verb? However mostly I find that when I'm developing a tacit expression, I do this by experimenting directly in the session, progressively building up the components of the tacit verb to get the result I want. This doesn't lead to especially readable code, but seems to "work best" for me. In my opinion the biggest advantage of the general approach that you suggest is the ability to document the components of the tacit verb. I'd prefer the above to the strategy Kip described because this way I don't end up with a whole lot of myverbdef adverbs in my locale. If I want to see what the verb raul does I type in the session: namedoc 'raul' raul (v) sum numbers by unique key The namedoc verb is described on the wiki "http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/OlegKobchenko/Namedoc"; and I have it loaded in my startup script. If I want to see the documented definition of the tacit verb I'd type in the session: edit 'raul' ... which will open up a script window at the definition of myverb. I realise this last technique isn't available to console users though! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
