Numeric Case Conversion
Dyalog APL version 18.0, released in June 2020, introduced the Case Convert system function ⎕C. It was a replacement for the long-lived (since version 15.0, from June 2016) I-beam 819⌶, which was then deprecated. (By the way, did you know that the digits 819 were chosen to be reminiscent of the letters BIg as in […]
Extending Structural Functions to Scalars
Traditionally, the set of monadic reversing or reflecting primitives, Reverse-First (⊖), Transpose (⍉), and Reverse (⌽) apply to entire arrays and are defined as identity functions on scalar arguments. Dyalog v19.0 extends the definitions to provide equivalent reflections on scalars. Character Data We expect that the new transformations will be most useful on characters. For example: (⍉’A’)(⌽’P’)(⊖’L’) […]
Dyalog Version 18.4.1
During the recent APL Seeds ’22 meeting, it was suggested that we introduce keywords that could be used as an alternative to APL symbols. Several historical APL systems have provided such mechanisms. However, rather than adopting one of the old keyword schemes, we have decided to go for a more future-proof solution, recognising that the […]
Mind Boggling Performance
or is it Minding Boggle Performance? In the 2019 APL Problem Solving Competition, we presented a problem to solve the Boggle game where a player tries to make as many words as possible from contiguous letters in a 4×4 grid with the stipulation that you cannot reuse a position on the board. Richard Park’s 17 […]
Speed versus Accuracy: the User's Choice
At Dyalog we have long striven for both correctness and high performance in our implementation. However, our views on this matter have recently undergone an historic shift in paradigm which we are excited to share with our users. We now intend to provide the best experience to the user of Dyalog APL not by providing […]
Permuting Internal Letters
Friday Afternoon It’s something of a custom in Dyalog to send a “fun” e-mail to the group on Friday afternoons. My gambit for this past Friday was: x ←’ according to research it doesn”t matter’ x,←’ what order the letters in a word are’ x,←’ the human mind can still read it’ x,←’ the only […]
Krypto
In the 2016 Year Game, the task was to generate the numbers 0 to 100 using APL primitives and the digits 2 0 1 6 in that order. For example, 20=16 ×2016 2⌊016 2+×016 … This “puzzle of the year” brings to mind Krypto, a game I played many years ago while in grade school. […]
Beauty and the Beast
Finally, the last accessory I ordered for my Raspberry Pi Zero (that’s the little red thing behind my keyboard) has arrived – an Acer 43″ ET430K monitor. The Zero won’t quite drive this monitor at its maximum resolution of 3840×2160 pixels, but as you can see, you get enough real estate to do real graphics […]
The 2016 Year Game
Our 2016 Year Game was launched in January 2016 and ran until the end of the year. The idea was simple – to find APL expressions involving exactly the digits 2 0 1 6 in that order to equal the numbers 0 to 100 using the fewest characters possible. The minimum number of characters for […]
It's APL…but not as we know it!
by the Dyalog Duck As the party behind Dyalog’s Twitter account I often search our feed for #APL or just APL to see if anyone is talking about us or APL in general and I am frequently surprised by what pops up. We have often had a giggle in the office over some of the […]
APL Puns
In the Beginning ⌊ floor ⌈ ceiling ⍟ log ⌊ and ⌈ were punnish when the notation was introduced in 1962. They have long since gone mainstream, used even by respectable mathematicians and computer scientists. To see why ⍟ is a pun, see the Vector article My Favourite APL Symbol. • […]
Simply A-maze-ing
One of many things I like about APL is that it’s fun to use for recreational computing. I will frequently happen upon an interesting problem, puzzle, or piece of code and consider how I might implement it in APL. I was thinking about how to generate mazes for an idea I have about a game to […]
