# the order of arguments

## stevan apter — 2000-06-19 22:48:56

    fellow concatenators:

    in joy:

        joy>5 3 -

        2

    but as i've implemented the primitives in conk:

        k>5 3 -

        -2

    i prefer the conk interpretation, since [3 -] is then the program which

    subtracts the item on the top of the stack from 3, which seems more natural

    than the program which subtracts 3 from the top of the stack.

    this holds for division, >, <, >=, and <=.  i can't think of any others

    offhand.

    this wasn't intentional, except insofar as i want the conk primitives

    to be mapped by one rule to the k primitives.  if i reverse the arguments

    of -, then i would have to do that everywhere, and the resulting set of

    primitives is extremely cumbersome.

    unfortunately, it means that several of manfred's joy programs won't run

    without a bit of surgery.  (i discovered this the hard way, thinking that

    my implementation of condlinrec must be wrong, since none of the examples

    would run!)

    any opinions?

    --

    ps:  the latest version can be found at www.kx.com/technical/contribs/stevan.