Thanks, Raul, Bill, and Fraser! However, after reading your responses, I'm more in the dark now than before, concerning dyadic left and right!
Rearranging Bill Lam's response a bit: > ... Firstly [ and ] are verb, in that context DOJ said they will > yield their noun argument. ... To be verbose, verb itself can only > see its immediate left or right noun arguments. ... > J should be easier to understand if you can avoid pre-mature shortcut > and work in its first principle. I am really trying to avoid what you term a "pre-mature shortcut" by taking the DOJ's EXACT AND LITERAL wording in its normal English sense without any special meanings or understandings associated with it which aren't stated. As I stated in my original message: > > Now here is where I need further enlightenment: ... > > Taking the Dictionary definition exactly and literally, it would > > appear that ... everything to the left of the "]" should be thrown > > out and only the "]" and its rightward elements would be returned. And you wrote: > Suppose a b c are verbs and you define a train f=: a [ b ] c As I said above, using the EXACT AND LITERAL wording of the DOJ meaning of dyadic [ and ] in the standard English sense and applying it to what I see in your train above, moving from right to left, the DOJ meaning would be to view it as ( a[b ) ] (c) , where I've parenthesized what's to the left and right of ] . Taking the DOJ definition at its exact and literal meaning, that would mean the result is c , with a[b being tossed out (ignored) in the process. In theory, if I gave the DOJ definition and your (or any other) expression to someone who knew nothing about the J language and asked them to "solve the puzzle" (working from right to left, of course), what I just stated above would be the result they (a typical person off the street = beginner) would come up with. My point is that, if the truth of the matter is different from this, then the definition is lacking some interpretive information that really needs to be stated. If you have to tell me more than "yields the left/right argument" as I interpreted it above according to standard English meaning and grammar, then I think something's missing from the definition. I may be completely all "wet" here, but does this make it clearer where I'm coming from? Forum members keep referring me (as a beginner) to the DOJ, and I do so--but this DOJ definition just does not help me understand what's going on in "real" J coding of "left" and "right" that people post here all the time, leaving me wondering what their code really does and how it does it. I'd still really like to see an essay explaining dyadic left and right (and all of their uses) in verbose detail! (I think this is a really important issue for beginners to the language, since so much seems to depend upon it in J programming.) Thanks in advance for any further guidance and assistance you all can give in helping me to understand this whole thing! Harvey ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
