When considering alternatives like this, it's worth thinking about the handling of the minus (-) case, where the same symbol is used to indicate both subtraction and negative numbers.
Note that the J implementation split the negative number treatment into two cases: The negative numbers themselves (_123) and the negation of a number (-123). Hypothetically, we might get rid of the ability to negate numbers (after all, you can always subtract them from zero). And that's the kind of thinking you need to go through if you want to separate out the monadic and dyadic verbs. Except you need to treat all operations this way, and come up with new ways of accessing existing functionality for all of them. Finally, note that after doing all this work, the changed implementation would initially accomplish only one thing: it would be creating new ways of generating errors. -- Raul On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 9:39 AM, Don Guinn <dongu...@gmail.com> wrote: > Perhaps I was just being a little picky in the distinction. But the > distinction between adverbs and conjunctions is important. It is similar to > the distinction between monadic and dyadic verbs. > > Sometimes I wonder what J would look like if verbs were not ambivalent. It > could avoid some confusion for newbies, but would require more primitives. > Difficult enough having to stick . and : after ASCII characters to build > primitives because there are not enough ASCII characters to go around. > > Tie (`) is not really necessary as it is easily replaced. > (;:'+ -') -: (+`-) > 1 > But it makes for neat expressions. > (+`-)/1 2 3 > 0 > (;:+ -)/1 2 3 > |rank error > | (;:+-)/1 2 3 > > On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 2:41 AM, Linda Alvord <lindaalv...@verizon.net > >wrote: > > > Don said "Tie is not an adverb. It is a conjunction." I did not mean to > > disparage tie but indicate that it is not necessary for table. I also > > meant that t5 was "just a simple adverb". > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
