On 7/25/08, Viktor Cerovski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Iverson thus desires to have a convention that decreases the number of > parenthesis used, without increasing the complexity of the convention > itself, subject to one unspoken rule: that expressions involve monadic > and dyadic operations. Dyadic operations are now increasing the > complexity of both his and the "standard" mathematical convention with > respect to the canonical, monadic-only parenthesizing (non-)convention > of the maximal clarity and the maximal use of parenthesis.
I am not sure why you would think that supporting operations like 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 increases the complexity of a notation. More specifically, I would argue that J's parser is not significantly more complex than LISP's. (Unless you ignore features of lisp's parser, like backquotes.) > The convention thus decreases the number of parenthesis but it is more > complicated to learn due to increased complexity: The problem with order > of evaluation is now how to evaluate F G x, and x F y G z (then F G H, > etc). The first one can be like in LISP, with outer parenthesizes > removed as unnecessary since it is about monadic function, F G x === F(G > x), while the second one can be either (x F y) G z, or x F (y G z), and > Iverson argues through 6 examples why the latter should be the better > choice. The results of the convention applied to A Programming Language > and consequently to J are undoubtedly ingenious, as they allow for > writing short, fast and powerful programs. All this provided that > programmer does not find the notation too complex to learn. And, of course, there are different kinds of complexity. -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
