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From: kwh@bentley.UUCP (KW Heuer)
Newsgroups: net.lang.apl
Subject: Re: Data structures in APL (re: proliferation of operators)
Message-ID: <833@bentley.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-May-86 09:36:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: bentley.833
Posted: Mon May 19 09:36:16 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 20-May-86 07:44:59 EDT
References: <2997@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Liberty Corner
Lines: 15

In article <2997@decwrl.DEC.COM> dec-cmkrnl!peterson writes:
>I have heard of some APLs which implement nested arrays.  Sounds like a
>step in the right direction.  But what do nested arrays buy the average
>APL user?  Besides 3 character string arguments to functions, I mean.

"Array of strings" is a natural concept which has no clean representation in
standard APL.  (Padding a 2D array destroys the significance of trailing
blanks, and may use an unacceptable amount of space.)  A function with three
string arguments is a special case of this.

Also, it's often useful to mix numeric and character data in the one object
(like "struct" in C).  This is a heterogeneous array rather than a nested
array, but some implementations handle both with the same language features.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ihnp4!bentley!kwh), The Walking Lint