There is a new vocabulary on the wiki giving more examples of each operator. There are several examples available if you know how to search. As you have seen you can solve things in different ways and none is better than another. What solves your assignment is the one that is the best way for now. You will probably never get a perfect manual.
There are loads of utilities and examples available and some of them are in labs/demos There are operations that can do replace string in a file. There are mapped files available that allow you to look at files like they are nouns. You have decades of improvements of how you use J ahead of you. 2011/11/8 Skip Cave <s...@caveconsulting.com> > Yes, that is pretty much what I have been doing. With each step in my > project, I determine what needs to be done, then I read the doc to see how > to do it.Then I keep trying stuff untill I get it to work. One thing at a > time. > > I haven't reported all my various explorations and incremental test steps, > as those are probably not of interest to the forum. My explorations and > tests were primarily to help me learn J. I only post to the forum when I > get to a point where I can't find an answer to what I want to do. > > Unfortunately, the fact that J uses different nomenclature from other > programming languages makes the functions and routines that do what I want, > hard to find. I don't want to have to read the complete language doc to > find how to manipulate strings, for example. Once I found the script files > for string manipulation, they do give some examples. However, nowhere in > the string doc does it explain that deb"1 is required to remove blanks for > a multi-dimentional text array. > > I realize that J gurus understand all about the rank operator, but that > kind of thing should be included in the examples for strings and other > functions, so beginners don't have to stumble around trying to figure out > why their functions don't work. Removing blanks from a multi-dimension > array should be a standard example in the strings doc, both for boxed and > unboxed arrays. > > I understand that the J vocabulary page contains a thorough definition of > each function. However the vocabulary is quite terse, and requires > knowledge of the format to decode. The vocabulary would benefit from a vast > expansion of the examples for each entry. > > I find that I can learn a language much faster if I have a project to do, > and I try to implement that project in the new language. I really > appreciate the help that all the forum members give, when I ask a question. > > Skip > > 2011/11/8 Björn Helgason <gos...@gmail.com> > > > You can of course work on each element in a boxed string. > > > > If I were you and beginning to learn J I would concentrate on one thing > at > > a time. > > > > Collect all the strings together, write or add them out as lines in a > > result file. > > > > In the next step you can read that intermediary result file and do the > > operations you want on them. > > > > Once you have finished all the steps you can begin to refine each step or > > eliminate as you see fit. > > > > Going in for heavy J stuff while learning J at the same time may not be > the > > best way to go. > > > > As you see you are getting expert advice as you go along so you probably > > know by now that your work is doable in J and many people know how to do > it > > and have done similar things in the past. > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > -- Björn Helgason, Verkfræðingur Fornustekkum II 781 Hornafirði, t-póst: gos...@gmail.com gsm: +3546985532 twitter: @flugfiskur http://groups.google.com/group/J-Programming Tæknikunnátta höndlar hið flókna, sköpunargáfa er meistari einfaldleikans góður kennari getur stigið á tær án þess að glansinn fari af skónum /|_ .-----------------------------------. ,' .\ / | Með léttri lund verður | ,--' _,' | Dagurinn í dag | / / | Enn betri en gærdagurinn | ( -. | `-----------------------------------' | ) | (\_ _/) (`-. '--.) (='.'=) ♖♘♗♕♔♙ `. )----' (")_(") ☃☠ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
