Could someone remind me what
(a c) and (c a) used to do as trains? (in J5) was (c c) ever allowed? (sorry this is difficult to search) ----- Original Message ----- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 10:12 AM Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] Unbox request for requests [For historical issues, it helps to spell out "Version" and "Release" with the numbers: J Version 1 was rather known as "APL\?" or "APL90 J" as presented in http://www.jsoftware.com/papers/J1990a.htm#intro J Version 2 - 7: = 1990-1993 J Version 7 (open source) was then followed by the polished, commercial, non-source "J Release 2". The never was something called "J Release 1". (You are free to view the preceeding versions as the "Release 1s", but it is in no way an official designation.) J Release 2 ...: = 1994 and later ] Henry Rich asked: > How far back do you have to go to find an old system that allows an > adverb as an operand to an adverb? The AA bident is still working, and the question should rather be: "How far do you have to go back to find an old system which does *not* allow the AA bi-dent?" > 7 didn't allow it, did it? J Version 7 allowed it: neitzel 422 > j7 J7 Copyright (c) 1990-1993, Iverson Software Inc. All Rights Reserved. 0!:0 'uname -a' ULTRIX ips 4.4 0 RISC APLscan =. /\ + APLscan 1 2 3 4 5 1 3 6 10 15 as did neitzel 426 > j J5.1 Copyright (c) 1990-1992, Iverson Software Inc. All Rights Reserved. which is the oldest version I have still running and which supports AA. The AA bident was first introduced with J Version 3.3: Changes in Version 3.3, 1991 06 25 [...] a-trains implemented c-trains implemented (I cannot find the AA bident yet in the blue "Tangl.Math + DoJ" booklet which must be Version 2.9ish or even 3. It is listed in the J Version 4 DoJ.) While I saved the CS department's decsystem from being scrapped and still operate it 24/7, my even earlier J Versions were binary-only (DOS), and almost vanished along with the my office's PC-XT which mainly served as terminal hooking into our Unix systems. But I found a "floppies.tgz" from that time with J Version 2.9, fired up "dosemu", and so here is a "pre-AA J:" https://www.gaertner.de/~neitzel/img/no-aa-j29.jpg The list of possible trains was the same for J Version 5.1 - J Version 7. J Release 2 added further ones, such as A0 V1 V2. J Release 5.1 [2002] did away with the more complex bi/tridents: * All tridents (dictionary Section II F) other than the verb-verb-verb case no longer work. * All bidents (dictionary Section II F) other than the verb-verb, adverb-adverb, and conjunction with an argument cases no longer work. IIRC, the reason stated for the removals was "are in the way for improved debugging". Did it improve? (I am asking because I didn't bother to do anything with J Release 5.x/6.x myself for licensing and src reasons. I remained a happy camper with J Rel. 4, and still run it on more obscure systems such as the Sharp Zaurus.) Martin Neitzel ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
