Thanks, Ric, that's a pretty powerful facility. Why hadn't I found all that for myself? My path was strewn with brambles...
I'd seen Find in Files before, but had expected it would only work with scripts and other text files. The "Help" tab I assumed was an in-window Help for the use of the facility itself, something I've learnt over the years not to press :-) . (A search of Help itself is something I'd expect to find in the Help menu, even if its functionality is replicated there.) I couldn't get "edit" to work on my old Win2000, but it works now on the iMac I'm using. I shall go back and restart the old Windows machine and try to find out why it didn't work before. JOOTT maybe. Thanks for pointing out a discrepancy I'd missed... In APWJ Edn 1, p195, three words are defined: by, over and tab, their definitions allegedly coming from Help|Phrases|2.c. In http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Doc/Articles/Play172 this has been corrected to 2.D --which I verified, locating by and over, but failed to spot that tab in 2.D has since been renamed table. (Nor does the narrative in /Play172... but I suggest it should be left as-is, with a footnote to explain that tab has since been renamed table.) ...and another thing I now spot: the definitions in Help|Phrases use the old x. and y. . BTW Find in Files works nowhere near as well for "over" as it does for "table" -- though it does help to search for "over=:" (and "over =:" --with a space). And edit fails to locate either 'by' or 'over'. I had actually thought to look in stdlib.ijs for tab, but couldn't find it, at which stage I gave up and posted my request. And table in stdlib.ijs is defined quite differently, no longer calling: by and over. So this punk is definitely not feeling lucky today. If anyone is keeping a wishlist for future facilities, could I nominate a searchable definitive list of "named" examples in Help|Phrases? Maybe as an Index, after References? I was about to ask for a similar list for stdlib.ijs too (which I'm finding most useful at my stage of learning J), but searching the wiki for "stdlib.ijs" gives me: http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/stdlib.ijs ...But it doesn't mention "table", so I guess it's not up-to-date. Incidentally, I'd say to the vendors, don't lose any sleep over this. Hey -- it's a free product! Having worked on two major commercial products written in APL, and a host of minor ones, I can tell you you need an army of documenters to keep up with quibbles like this. But (putting my old Human Factors hat on) consistent, debugged documentation certainly blunts the brambles for a J trainee. And it's something only a trainee can tell you. Ian On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 6:20 AM, Sherlock, Ric<[email protected]> wrote: >> From: Ian Clark >> The Phrases document (Phr) in J Help contains a lot of useful >> definitions which are graced by their own names, eg "by", "over", >> "tab". But Phr doesn't appear to have an Index or an easy way of >> searching it. >> >> Have these named words been collected into a list or script somewhere? >> >> If not, how should I go about looking up in Phr a half-remembered >> definition, like "tab" (which happens to be defined in >> Help|Phrases|2.D)? > > I find the "Find in Files" utility very useful for searching through the Help > documents, System scripts, or my own project scripts for definitions that I > half remember or topics of interest: > > Edit|Find in Files > Choose the Help tab. > Find what: tab > In context: any > Look In: Phrases > Click Find to display the results of search in the text box. > Click Open to show a summary of the results in the browser with clickable > links to the various pages. > > I don't see a definition for "tab" on that page ... was the definition you > were thinking of actually "table"? > > There is an adverb "table" defined in the ~system/main/stdlib.ijs too. In a > fresh J session try: > > table i.5 > > To view the definition in the script where it was defined type: > edit 'table' > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
