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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.lang.apl
Subject: Re: Proliferation of operators (was: C Builtin Functions)
Message-ID: <1477@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-May-86 19:38:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.1477
Posted: Mon May 19 19:38:06 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 23-May-86 22:22:37 EDT
References: <1418@mmintl.UUCP> <812@bentley.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 29


In article <812@bentley.UUCP> kwh@bentley.UUCP writes:
>You say APL has "too little structure".  If you mean things like "while" and
>"if", I think they may be unwelcome.  Put in a "while" loop, and people will
>start using it to implement a matrix multiply.  (For those who don't get it,
>APL has a builtin matrix multiply, "+.x".)  The language doesn't need much
>program structure, because it has data structure in its place.

I disagree.  "if/then/else" would be very useful in APL.  You wind up
using go to (->) instead.  This is bad for the same reason it is bad in
other languages.  The data structuring somewhat reduces the need for such
things, but not all that much -- particularly for complex applications.

People can write a matrix multiply using go to right now.  There is no cure
for idiocy, and only one for ignorance.

>Now, I *would* like to see some improvement in the data structure.  It's now
>practically impossible to write a function which expects, say, three string
>(character vector) arguments.  I like the grounded tree model, myself, as a
>fix for this.  Also, APL is *severely* in need of *variable declarations*!

I had both program and data structure in mind when I made that statement.

One advantage of a proper implementation of variable declarations is that
one would be able to define a function as operating on, say, two scalar
arguments; if invoked with two arrays of the same dimensions, it would
automatically be called for each corresponding pair of scalars.

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108