Devon McCormick wrote:
>
> Take a look at http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/NYCJUG/notationFAQ for an
> argument why right-to-left execution is more useful than the reverse.
> Hint:
> it becomes an issue only when you start thinking about arrays as basic
> objects and how you apply functions across them.
>
> Also, I've started a page to address the fallacy of thinking that there is
> such a thing as a "standard mathematical notation":
> http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/NYCJUG/MathematicalNotation . John Randall
> has had a lot to say about this at J meetings - he especially recommends a
> book by Cajori to get an historical perspective on this - but I don't
> think
> either of us have written up anything on these discussions.
>
> Finally, an essay about why this is an important issue -
> http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Notation_as_a_Tool_of_Thought - at
> least if you want to improve your ability to deal with certain kinds of
> abstractions.
>
> Hope these help you understand why this particular choice has been made in
> J.
>
One curious thing about the right-to-left notation is that
the whole expression has to be entered in order evaluation
to begin. Since, as far as I understand, the end-of-line
in J means also the end-of-expression, there is no way to
enter a multi-line expression, i.e every expression in
J is one-and-only-one-liner.
One remedy would be to introduce NC. which means "the
rest of the line is a comment and the expression continues
in the next line". For instance:
f g h NB. an expression
could be written now as:
f g NC. beginning and ...
h NB. end of the expression
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