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Tips and Tricks

This category collects practical Tips and Tricks for working with Dyalog APL day to day: customising the session and IDE, keyboard shortcuts and input methods, and techniques for squeezing more performance out of your code, including flat-array alternatives to nested data. Expect concrete, applied advice rather than language theory.

Working with LLMs and Dyalog

In: AI, Tips and Tricks, Tools

Notes about this blog post: Working with an AI coding “agent” can make us more productive by automating boiler plating, helping with testing, and... Read

By

Stefan Kruger

July 2026

Making the IDE My Own – Part 2 (Windows)

In: Tips and Tricks

Content Here. Read

By

Adám Brudzewsky

July 2026

Making the IDE My Own – Part 1

In: Tips and Tricks

Sometimes I want additional functionality in the IDE. Over the years I have collected a small collection of “tweaks”. I have a single tidy folder of small... Read

By

Adám Brudzewsky

June 2026

Enhanced Debugging with Function Keys – Evaluate selection

In: Tips and Tricks, Tools

See also Enhanced Debugging with Function Keys. When tracing through a complex dfn and reaching a guard (condition:result), I am often wary of tracing into... Read

By

Adám Brudzewsky

December 2020

Towards Improvements to Stencil

In: Algorithms, APL Language, Implementation, Tips and Tricks

Background The stencil operator ⌺ was introduced in Dyalog version 16.0 in 2017. Recently we received some feedback (OK, complaints) that (a) stencil does... Read

By

Roger Hui

June 2020

Enhanced Debugging with Function Keys

In: Tips and Tricks

Sometimes I want an additional functionality in the IDE. (Are you a RIDE user? We’ll cover that too!) For example, the other day, I was tracing through... Read

By

Adám Brudzewsky

September 2018

I-Beam Mnemonics

In: APL Language, Tips and Tricks

I-Beam (⌶) is an operator that takes as its operand a numeric code and derives a function which isn’t really considered to be part of the APL language... Read

By

Richard Smth

June 2016

Loops, Folds and Tuples

In: APL Language, Musings, Tips and Tricks

For-loops Given an initial state defined by a number of variables, a for-loop iterates through its argument array modifying the state. A←... ⋄... Read

By

John Scholes

May 2016

Quicksort in APL Revisited

In: Algorithms, APL Language, Tips and Tricks

A message in the Forum inquired on sorting strings in APL with a custom comparison function. First, sorting strings without a custom comparison function... Read

By

Roger Hui

February 2016

Zero-length Regular Expression Matches Considered Harmful

In: APL Language, Tips and Tricks

I was asked by a colleague why ⎕S reports two matches in the following example: ('d*'⎕S 0 1)'321' ┌───┬───┐ │0 3│3 0│... Read

By

Richard Smth

February 2015

Three-and-a-bit

In: Algorithms, APL Language, Tips and Tricks

The most obvious expression for computing π in APL is ○1. But what if you can’t remember how ○ works, or your O key is broken, or you feel like... Read

By

Jay Foad

January 2015

Solving the 2014 APL Problem Solving Competition – it’s as easy as 1 1 2 3…

In: Algorithms, APL Language, APL Problem Solving Competition, Tips and Tricks

The winners of the 2014 APL Problem Solving Competition were recognized at the Dyalog ’14 user meeting and had a chance to share their... Read

By

Brian Becker

November 2014

A Speed-Up Story

In: APL Language, Tips and Tricks

The first e-mail of the work week came from Nicolas Delcros. He wondered whether anything clever can be done with ∘.≡ on enclosed character strings. I... Read

By

Roger Hui

November 2014

Creating Shortcuts (Microsoft Windows)

In: APL Language, Tips and Tricks, Windows

At Dyalog, a developer not only needs access to all of the readily available editions of the interpreter but also to earlier versions that are no longer... Read

By

John Daintree

July 2014

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