an interim report on R

http://www.apl-385.demon.co.uk/rcs/programs/r/net.htm

appears in the current issue of Vector

http://www.vector.org.uk/

i've pointed richard at joy, and at our mail list.

R is a stack-based array language designed and implemented by richard smith:

http://www.apl385.com/rcs/programs/r/

richard published several papers on R in vector, e.g.

http://www.vector.org.uk/archive/v202/rcs202.htm

hoi stevan,

that's a great catch!
thanks for sharing the link

On Mar 19, 2008, at 11:14 PM, Stevan Apter wrote:

> R is a stack-based array language designed and implemented by
> richard smith:
>
> http://www.apl385.com/rcs/programs/r/
>
> richard published several papers on R in vector, e.g.
>
> http://www.vector.org.uk/archive/v202/rcs202.htm
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Stevan,

What makes it an array language?

- Christopher

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:14 PM, Stevan Apter <sa@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> R is a stack-based array language designed and implemented by richard smith:
>
> http://www.apl385.com/rcs/programs/r/
>
> richard published several papers on R in vector, e.g.
>
> http://www.vector.org.uk/archive/v202/rcs202.htm
>

Not another R! We already have this one: r-project.org (the first
Google hit for R, in fact).

Dan

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:14 PM, Stevan Apter <sa@...> wrote:
> R is a stack-based array language designed and implemented by richard smith:
>
> http://www.apl385.com/rcs/programs/r/
>
> richard published several papers on R in vector, e.g.
>
> http://www.vector.org.uk/archive/v202/rcs202.htm

On Mar 19, 2008, at 5:46 PM, Christopher Diggins wrote:

> Hi Stevan,
>
> What makes it an array language?

You can write this:

(1 2 3) (4 5 6) +

Instead of this:

(1 2 3) (4 5 6) [+] zip-with

And this:

(1 2 3)\+

Instead of this:

(1 2 3) [+] reduce

*shrug*

- John

if that's intellectual curiosity, i am marie of roumania.

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Nowak" <john@...>
To: <concatenative@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 6:00 PM
Subject: Re: [stack] R

>
> On Mar 19, 2008, at 5:46 PM, Christopher Diggins wrote:
>
>> Hi Stevan,
>>
>> What makes it an array language?
>
> You can write this:
>
> (1 2 3) (4 5 6) +
>
> Instead of this:
>
> (1 2 3) (4 5 6) [+] zip-with
>
> And this:
>
> (1 2 3)\+
>
> Instead of this:
>
> (1 2 3) [+] reduce
>
> *shrug*
>
> - John
>
>

On Mar 19, 2008, at 8:54 PM, Stevan Apter wrote:

> if that's intellectual curiosity, i am marie of roumania.

I'll admit I'm running low on intellectual curiosity at the moment.
Suffering from thesis paper exhaustion.

What I was getting at is that it appears there's little you can't
emulate easily via higher order functions in a language like Joy. If
that's the case, then it seems the advantages are primarily syntactic
in nature.

It took a slight amount of beating (from Slava Pestov no less) to get
me to see the light with respect to concatenative languages. If anyone
has the patience to show me what's what with respect to array
languages (or, alternatively, a good link), I'd appreciate it.

- John

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Nowak" <john@...>
To: <concatenative@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 7:02 PM
Subject: Re: [stack] R

>
> On Mar 19, 2008, at 8:54 PM, Stevan Apter wrote:
>
>> if that's intellectual curiosity, i am marie of roumania.
>
> I'll admit I'm running low on intellectual curiosity at the moment.
> Suffering from thesis paper exhaustion.
>
> What I was getting at is that it appears there's little you can't
> emulate easily via higher order functions in a language like Joy. If
> that's the case, then it seems the advantages are primarily syntactic
> in nature.
>
> It took a slight amount of beating (from Slava Pestov no less) to get
> me to see the light with respect to concatenative languages. If anyone
> has the patience to show me what's what with respect to array
> languages (or, alternatively, a good link), I'd appreciate it.

www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf

still the best exposition of the central ideas of array programming.

>
> - John
>

On Mar 20, 2008, at 8:02 AM, Stevan Apter wrote:

> www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf
>
> still the best exposition of the central ideas of array programming.

That link seems to be dead. The google HTML cached version is
unreadable. Do you have a copy?

On Mar 20, 2008, at 1:21 PM, John Nowak wrote:

>
> On Mar 20, 2008, at 8:02 AM, Stevan Apter wrote:
>
>> www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf
>>
>> still the best exposition of the central ideas of array programming.
>
> That link seems to be dead. The google HTML cached version is
> unreadable. Do you have a copy?

Ah forgive me, it appears to be working again (albeit very slowly).

- John

On Mar 20, 2008, at 19:23 , John Nowak wrote:

>
> On Mar 20, 2008, at 1:21 PM, John Nowak wrote:
>
>>
>> On Mar 20, 2008, at 8:02 AM, Stevan Apter wrote:
>>
>>> www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf
>>>
>>> still the best exposition of the central ideas of array programming.
>>
>> That link seems to be dead. The google HTML cached version is
>> unreadable. Do you have a copy?
>
> Ah forgive me, it appears to be working again (albeit very slowly).

Probably due to all of us who are downloading the PDF at the moment ;-)
--
don

>
> - John
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 8:02 AM, Stevan Apter <sa@...> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Nowak" <john@...>
> >
> > On Mar 19, 2008, at 8:54 PM, Stevan Apter wrote:
> >
> >> if that's intellectual curiosity, i am marie of roumania.
> >

My original post (sorry if sounded like I was trolling) was because
the R language looked to me like PostScript with several overloaded
operators for dealing specifically with arrays. I was wondering if
that is all that it took for a language to be considered an array
language.

>
> www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf
>
> still the best exposition of the central ideas of array programming.

Thanks for the link. I should emphasize that I am not in any way
trying to negate any of the benefits of array programming, but as a
language designer I want to know what characteristics a langauge
should have to be considered an array language.

Thanks again,
Christopher

that link is really REALLY slow. if you're a member of ACM you can
get it there -- a better instance than the PDF of the photocopy at
the link i provided. or you can purchase the collected turing award
papers, in which it appears. or you can probably find that paper
and others by iverson at jsoftware.com.

here's an illustration.

given a vector v (list, array, whatever) of integers and a maximum
value n, chop v into maximum subvectors s. intuitively, you build s
by taking as much as you can from v without exceeding n, then take
some more, &c. the remainder (if any) is the final subvector of s.

v:3 2 2 0 1 4 0 4 3 2 3 4 3 4 1 1 2 2 2 4
n:10

bp[n;v]
0 5 8 11 13 18 / breakpoints of v

so:

bp[n;v]_v / chop v at those breakpoints
3 2 2 0 1
4 0 4
3 2 3
4 3
4 1 1 2 2
2 4

i picked this one off the k mailing list -- a recent query by a k
newbie.

as it happens, bp is idiomatic. it crops up in lots of contexts.
for example, wordwrap:

wordwrap:{" "sv'bp[x;count each w]_w:" "vs y}

wordwrap[20;"split words on 20 column boundaries - produce a list of strings"]
"split words on 20 column"
"boundaries - produce a"
"list of strings"

that is,

w:" "vs y / split the string into words
b:msv[x;count each w] / find the breakpoints where count <= x
s:b _w / chop the words into sublists at those points
" "sv s / fuse the words into a string

array languages evolve in the direction of finding a better range of
datatypes and a better set of primitives, with the result that a larger
set of problems come in range of array solution. programs get smaller,
have less cruft, run faster, and take less space.

here's bp:

bp:{-2_(1+a bin a|x+-1_0,a:sums y)\[0]}

enchilada is an array-oriented concatenative language, but very very
different from APL or j or k. i don't know why it slipped my mind
when i raised the subject.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Diggins" <cdiggins@...>
To: <concatenative@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 2:41 PM
Subject: Re: [stack] R

> On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 8:02 AM, Stevan Apter <sa@...> wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "John Nowak" <john@...>
>> >
>> > On Mar 19, 2008, at 8:54 PM, Stevan Apter wrote:
>> >
>> >> if that's intellectual curiosity, i am marie of roumania.
>> >
>
> My original post (sorry if sounded like I was trolling) was because
> the R language looked to me like PostScript with several overloaded
> operators for dealing specifically with arrays. I was wondering if
> that is all that it took for a language to be considered an array
> language.
>
>>
>> www.jdl.ac.cn/turing/pdf/p444-iverson.pdf
>>
>> still the best exposition of the central ideas of array programming.
>
> Thanks for the link. I should emphasize that I am not in any way
> trying to negate any of the benefits of array programming, but as a
> language designer I want to know what characteristics a langauge
> should have to be considered an array language.
>
> Thanks again,
> Christopher
>

Stevan Apter <sa@...> wrote:

> that link is really REALLY slow. if you're a member of ACM you can
> get it there -- a better instance than the PDF of the photocopy at
> the link i provided. or you can purchase the collected turing award
> papers, in which it appears. or you can probably find that paper
> and others by iverson at jsoftware.com.

They link to http://elliscave.com/APL_J/tool.pdf.

-Wm

gene mcdonnell's list of 1000 array "finger exercises":

http://www.kx.com/technical/contribs/eugene/kidioms.html

R

stevan apter — 2003-11-27 14:20:06

Stevan Apter — 2008-03-19 22:14:39

Robbert van Dalen — 2008-03-19 21:19:28

Christopher Diggins — 2008-03-19 21:46:52

Daniel Ehrenberg — 2008-03-19 22:21:41

John Nowak — 2008-03-19 23:00:42

Stevan Apter — 2008-03-20 00:54:18

John Nowak — 2008-03-20 00:02:38

Stevan Apter — 2008-03-20 12:02:27

John Nowak — 2008-03-20 17:21:46

John Nowak — 2008-03-20 17:23:27

Don Groves — 2008-03-20 19:27:48

Christopher Diggins — 2008-03-20 19:41:25

Stevan Apter — 2008-03-20 22:31:55

William Tanksley, Jr — 2008-03-20 22:22:32

Stevan Apter — 2008-03-21 15:42:37