Dear Brad, Thank you so much for taking the time to reply! I wrote a few notes inline, below:
On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 4:07 PM Brad Gilbert <b2gi...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Functions in Raku tend to have one job and one job only. > > `split` splits a string. > > So if you call `split` on something that is not a string it gets turned into > one if it can. > > This happens for most functions. > > Having `split` be the only function that auto-vectorizes against an array > would be very confusing. I think the question I have is why string "auto-joining" is proverbially so 'high-up on the food chain'. I've understood that Perl (and by extension, Raku) has historically been a 'list-processing" language--that the language is centered on lists. So I expected that if you call a function on a single-element scalar, the function acts on that one element. I expected that if you call a function on a multi-element list, the function acts on every single element individually. (Obviously I'm glossing over the differences between Raku's multi-element $-sigilled scalars and @-sigilled arrays). > If it isn't the only function, then you have to come up with some list of > functions which do vectorize. > > Then every single person has to memorize that list in its entirety. Which can > be difficult even for experts. > > Perl has a similar list of functions which automatically work on `$_`, and > almost no one has that list memorized. > Raku very specifically did not copy that idea. > > --- > > Raku instead has high level concepts that it uses consistently. > > One of those concepts is that functions have one job and one job only. > > So if you call `chars` on anything it gets turned into a string first. > This is where my previous question on "language-paradigm priority" comes into play. Here I'm applying what I know from the (functional) R-programming language, where you choose a data structure based upon your input data. Have an ordered/unordered mixed sequence of letters/numbers? Use a vector. Have many vectors of varying length that are somehow all related to one another? Use a list. Have related vectors of the same length (rectangular data, i.e. database row)? Use a matrix or dataframe. Below, R-code (in the R-REPL) working on the built-in "letters" vector: > letters [1] "a" "b" "c" "d" "e" "f" "g" "h" "i" "j" "k" "l" "m" "n" "o" "p" "q" "r" "s" "t" "u" "v" "w" "x" "y" "z" > cat(letters) a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z > length(letters) [1] 26 > is.vector(letters) [1] TRUE > mode(letters) [1] "character" > nchar(letters) [1] 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 > nchar(paste0(letters, collapse="")) [1] 26 > Above, I call nchar() on a vector and I get back the number characters for each element of the list by default. We can think about the R-vector (analogous to a Raku array) driving the interchange when acted upon by R-functions. I think R's behavior makes sense when you try to call a mathematical function. The data structure dictates the return, and the bare math-function call gives the desired/expected return whether the function (e.g. cos) is called on a single-element or a vector of elements: > cos(2*pi) [1] 1 > cos(0:6 * pi) [1] 1 -1 1 -1 1 -1 1 Thanks, Bill. PS. If Raku's split() is string-only, what splits on bytes in Raku? What splits a file into multiple equal-sized files in Raku? Thx. https://www.theunixschool.com/2012/10/10-examples-of-split-command-in-unix.html > On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 4:23 PM William Michels via perl6-users > <perl6-us...@perl.org> wrote: >> On Tue, Oct 6, 2020 at 1:59 PM Tobias Boege <t...@taboege.de> wrote:
