I was just trying to make clearer my intentions with that fragment of C.
It looks like dyad ~: will serve my purposes, thanks. 

___________________________

David Vaughan

On 12 Jul 2011, at 18:19, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 11:52 AM, David Vaughan
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> You misunderstood Raul, the second line is simply "in C" the programming 
>> language. I just meant I wanted the first line's equivalent in J.
> 
> Ok... except that's not valid C, it's a fragment of C.  And, worse,
> it's a fragment which has a purpose which relates to C's structure
> where best practice in J is to use different kinds of structures.
> 
> For example,
>    A=:1 2 3 2 1
>    B=: 3 2 3 2 3
>    N=:2 3 5 7 11
> 
>   A ~: B
> 1 0 0 0 1
> 
> I would argue that this serves the same role in J that the if
> statement served in C.  It performs the stated comparison.  But your
> dangling "if" statement suggested that something else was intended.
> But what?
> 
> Let's pick out some values from N where the condition is true:
>   N * A ~: B
> 2 0 0 0 11
> 
> Or let's say that we do not want to maintain N's structure, we just
> want the selected values:
>   N#~A~:B
> 2 11
> 
> Or let's say that we want to negate values in N where A does not match B:
>   N * _1 ^ A ~: B
> _2 3 5 7 _11
> 
> ... and ... so on...
> 
> The point I am trying to make is that you can do a lot of things -- in
> essence, any J expression which allows for numeric values might be
> appropriate.  But that's a lot of ground to cover.
> 
> Meanwhile, in C, you have micro management control over what happens
> after an if.  And while you can do that in J
> (http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/ctrl.htm) we often have
> better alternatives.  You can construct arbitrary problems where there
> is no better alternative, but you can also often change problems to
> allow for better alternatives.
> 
> -- 
> Raul
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

Reply via email to