I can see what you mean, however when calculating the number of days between today and some day in the past the natural thing to me is to subtract the earlier date from the later date therefore giving a positive number. This is modelled on the tsdiff verb from the dates.ijs script (part of stdlib.ijs script in j701).
Your post has prompted me to think it would be worthwhile making the verb symmetrical, i.e. rather than just a blanket "in the future", maybe it should say "less than an hour from now", "1 day from now", "more than a month from now" ... On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Devon McCormick <[email protected]> wrote: > Intuitively, I would think of negative numbers as indicating the past but > maybe that's just me. > > On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 1:35 AM, Ric Sherlock <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I'm interested in suggested improvements or alternative approaches. >> >> ... >> >> sayDiffNow _2 0 0.05 0.1 0.5 1 13 22 32 >> in the future >> less than an hour ago >> ... >> > > -- > Devon McCormick, CFA > ^me^ at acm. > org is my > preferred e-mail > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
