What would J be like if hooks and forks were not an artifact of the parser but were implemented as explicit commands?
Fork would be an adverb which takes a verb and produces a conjunction. The result of that conjunction would be a verb. Hook would be a conjunction. Trident would disappear from the parsing rules. Bident would have semantics like U @: V This would make some expressions much easier. Expressions which chain monads together would become much simpler. However, expressions which chain dyads together would be a bit more complicated -- counting from the right you would need to decorate all the even verbs with the fork conjunction. For example, if fork were ]: the classic J expression for mean would become: mean =: +/ %]: # The dictionary would need to be changed. Every book or page ever written about J would need to be changed. Worse, implicit parenthesis involving forks would follow different rules from implicit parenthesis involving non-forks. To work around this, you'd have to rewrite the rules for adjectives and conjunctions. The result would not look much like J. For example, the classic J expression for mean might be more like mean=: /+ %]: # -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
