On 4 November 2015 at 07:42, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 3:15 PM, Wendell P <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Although at first glance K looks similar to J, it really is not an APL,

in my limited exploration of programming languages k clearly inherits some
of the remarkable features of APL.  it does have some genetic diversity,
but in my own mind, k is my "APL of choice".  in my limited experience of
J, k shares it's ability to express a whole program in one line - and it
does so because of common heritage.

http://kx.com/a/k/document/apl.txt

> The data structures are simpler, yes. But the syntax seems to have a
> lot of little rules (which may not be immediately obvious).

There are only 3 basic elements: noun, verb, adverb.  These form terms and
expressions:

  E:E;e|e e:nve|te| t:n|v v:tA|{E}|V n:t[E]|(E)|[E]|N

There are rules about lexical analysis that might take getting used to, but
these rules allow for "/" to start a comment as well as be "insert" like +/
is "sum". It is also tricky to make "-" mean negate as well as form the
literal triple 1 0 -1 rather than the pair (1 0)-1

It's all a fight for brevity given ascii.

regards,
jack
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