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From: robison@uiucdcsb.CS.UIUC.EDU
Newsgroups: net.lang.apl
Subject: Re: APL structure
Message-ID: <10300002@uiucdcsb>
Date: Sat, 7-Jun-86 13:19:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uiucdcsb.10300002
Posted: Sat Jun  7 13:19:00 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Jun-86 03:05:37 EDT
References: <400@water.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:water.UUCP:400:uiucdcsb:10300002:000:525
Nf-From: uiucdcsb.CS.UIUC.EDU!robison    Jun  7 12:19:00 1986


I've felt the same way.  Now for a question: Suppose you did want to
add C/Pascal style structured data to APL.  How would you do it?  What
new operators or functions would be necessary?  I've been working on
an FP implementation that has exactly the same problem: ``data aggregates''
which are not really structured.  It's easy to group data into lists
to simulate records, but the lists don't have field names, so
type-checking and legibility both suffer.  

- Arch D. Robison
  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign