On 1/5/2012 8:36 AM, David Mertens wrote:
Yes, rank. Come to think of it, though, I was thinking "rank" would be a
good word in place of "number of dimensions," as in a rank-two piddle,
rather than a two-dimensional piddle.
The issue arises with describing data. For example, a point in three
dimensional space is described by a one dimensional piddle with three
elements. As you can see, the word "dimension" is used in two ways, one to
describe the extent of space, the other to describe the shape of the
piddle. Using the word "rank," we would say that a point in three
dimensional space is described by a rank-one piddle with three elements.
A potential revised lexicon, then, would be this:
dims -> shape
ndims -> rank
In order of specificity, we would talk about a...
3x5 piddle,
This would be a shape [3,5] piddle
rank-two piddle
This would be 2-D piddle in the current lingo
which seems comparable to rank-2 piddle but is
already in usage.
piddle
One final, very deep annoyance that I have is with the term "thread." It
should be "autoloop." But that should wait until after 2.4.10 at the very
least.
Motivation for shape is that I kept reading and
writing awkward/long constructions describing the
vector of dimension extents. We could definitely
have more discussions about language (I think the
PDL Book will generate some use cases for follow-on
discussions).
--Chris
David
On Jan 5, 2012 4:48 AM, "Matthew Kenworthy"<[email protected]>
wrote:
The "shape" proposal is an *excellent* idea - it gets my vote!
On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 5:17 AM, Craig DeForest<[email protected]>wrote:
Hrm. As long as we're on terminology, how do you describe a PDL with dim
list [3,5]?
We've/I've been calling it a 2-D PDL with dim sizes 3 and 5 (as in "dim 0
has size 3, and dim 1 has size 5"), or alternatively a 3x5-PDL. Its first
row would be called a 3-PDL or a 1-D PDL with size 3.
My preference is "3x5 PDL" as "2d 3x5 PDL" is a bit redundant.
I'd say no to "3-PDL" - I'd prefer "1-D PDL with size 3".
"A PDL with shape 3 by 5" sounds good to me!
Matt
--
Matthew Kenworthy / Assistant Professor / Leiden Observatory
Niels Bohrweg 2 (#463) / P.O. Box 9513 / 2300 RA Leiden / NL
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