Name Colouring for Dfns
APL is sometimes criticised because expressions that include names cannot, in general, be parsed without knowing whether the names represent functions or variables. For example, the name thing in the expression thing⍳3 could reference an array (in which case the ⍳ is dyadic) or it could reference a function (making the ⍳ monadic). An APL […]
A Dialog on APL
A discussion between Nicolas Delcros and Roger Hui Nicolas, Prologue: From a language point of view, thanks to Ken Iverson, it is obvious that you want grade rather than sort as a primitive. Yet from a performance point of view, sort is currently faster than grade. Can one be “more fundamental” than the other? If […]
Do Functions Know Their Own Names?
Going back a long way when John Scholes and I were writing version 0 of Dyalog there was a big discussion about whether functions knew their own names. This discussion still surfaces, with John taking the side that they don’t and me taking the side that they do. Essentially, John would argue that after A←2, […]
