J and Q are good choices. Why don't you report your findings without letting us prejudice you one way or the other? If you have difficulty doing a particular problem in J, explain the difficulty and we will try to help.
The J Primer http://www.jsoftware.com/docs/help701/primer/contents.htm is an excellent place to begin learning J. Looking down that table of contents page I see "Control structure" and am led to http://www.jsoftware.com/docs/help701/primer/control_structure.htm where we see, following and preceding clear examples, ------- There are nine control structure patterns: if. T do. B end. if. T do. B else. B1 end. if. T do. B elseif. T1 do. B1 elseif. T2 do. B2 end. try. B catch. B1 end. while. T do. B end. whilst. T do. B end. for. T do. B end. for_i. T do. B end. select. T case. T0 do. B0 case. T1 do. B1 fcase.T2 do. B2 case. T3 do. B3 end. A control structure starts with if. , try. , while. , whilst , for. , for_i. , or select. and ends with a matching end. . Words beginning with T or B denote a block of 0 or more sentences and can contain nested control structures. The result of the last sentence in a T block determines which block is executed next and whether execution in the control structure is finished. ------- Happy exploration! Kip Murray On 1/15/2012 12:29 PM, Colin Ward wrote: > Hi all, > > I am trying to choose a specific array language to learn and have narrowed > my list down to two - J and Q/kbd. Is there any general accepted wisdoms > known by you experienced in either as to the pro's / cons of each. > > My thoughts so far are: > > 1) It is for personal/learning use - so i am not bothered by the high cost > of K as they have a free version for personal use. > > > 2) My first project is parsing a csv generated from excel and distilling it > - I find that the Q syntax of select/where clauses are easier, and the > equivalent in J is not so obvious. I know of JDB but I do not need > permanent storage and I am not finding it easy to learn how to use it. > Is it easy to perform the equivalent of select/where in J tables without > ahving to use JDB? > > > 3) Q say they are fast - is J a lot slower? > > > 4) I really like the thought of J for its tacit programming, and I also > would like to experiment with combinator logic as described in the book 'to > mock a mockingbird'. (it looks like form/hooks may be linked to the S/K > functions in Churchs combinatory logic). Does Q have tacit programming? > > I have read the archive to glean what I can but kdb questions seem to be a > lot more specific than mine. > > Thanks in advance for any of your thoughts on this. > > best regards > Colin > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
