The data analysis stuff that J seems to have abandoned is also of great
importance to APL developers: the data being the software we are
developing. It could be frustrating to discover how little of a
developer's time is spent knowing the correct answer to a problem. That
this is not frustrating in practice is because APL marbles tiny moments
of success into the whole process
I recently wanted to solve a problem which was in essence: find the
first x, a member of i. 10^9 where f x was true. Because 10^9 is a big
number, what I would do in APL was this: show progress in steps of 1000,
and allow me to interrupt the whole process (with Ctrl-Break) if it
looks like it will never find an answer, perhaps because I expected one
sooner Nope. As far as I can tell, display to the session is
suppressed until a return to immediate execution, and Ctrl-Break doesn't
work at all.
Fraser Jackson wrote:
Chris Burke wrote:
I am in two minds as to whether anything is required here. However, I
do think that delete all temporary files would be the more useful
option, as rarely do I want to delete a specific temporary file.
After a bit, the temp directory is filled with junk, and you just
want to clean the whole thing up.
Anyway, I put a File|Delete Temporary Files menu item in the latest
scripts, and we can see if it turns out to be useful.
For me, the temp file is a convenient immediately accessible file
which has lots of small, often one off tasks or snippets which I may
want to refer back to. I normally write a first line which provides
me enough detail about the task for later reference. If I begin to
use material in a script more frequently I save it with a name but in
the temp directory. As an aide memoir I have a utility, firstline''
which displays the file name and firstline for all scripts in temp as
default, but works for any directory.
I think the J environment has been developed with a primary focus on
programming and system development, not on its use as an interactive
working environment. The project manager is great for managing a
system development project, but is not oriented towards a data
analysis project, which is the sort of thing I am commonly engaged in.
For that, having the simple accessible system provided by storing and
accessing stuff in \temp is invaluable. Some stuff stays there quite
long term. Other bits get embedded in a system, or at the end of a
project get filed away as a record of what was done. Having the
ability to flexibly modify the current folder used for such a \temp
storage location would be a useful enhancement. In the dbeta
Edit\Configure\Folders enables setting ~user, but that is not the
default directory for \temp.
Temp provides a simple default filing system within which there is a
sequential record of the scripts created and used. As such it is
extremely useful. In such an environment, a single file deletion is
fine, but erasing the whole record of such activities could be very
costly.
Essentially I want you to think seriously about the needs of users who
are not primarily programmers, who have complex data analysis tasks
where the tree of steps they take evolves as they expand their
understanding of the problem, and where a record of the sequence of
their steps is important to them. For them the present Temp file
mechanism is a flexible and valuable tool. Erasing everything in it
is the last thing one is interested in. If we really want to expand
the user base of J we need to address the needs of such users and not
create simple routes to dangerous actions.
Fraser
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|\/| Randy A MacDonald | APL: If you can say it, it's done.. (ram)
|/\| ramacd <at> nbnet.nb.ca |
|\ | | The only real problem with APL is that
BSc(Math) UNBF'83 | it is "still ahead of its time."
Sapere Aude | - Morten Kromberg
Natural Born APL'er |
-----------------------------------------------------(INTP)----{ gnat }-
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
