Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
Path: watmath!watserv1!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!darwin.sura.net!jvnc.net!phage!wchang
From: wchang@cshl.org (Bill Chang)
Subject: Re:      APL Transliterations (and parsing)
Message-ID: <1992Mar27.032517.2871@cshl.org>
Summary: Operators and functions
Sender: news@cshl.org (NO MAIL)
Organization: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
References: <1992Mar24.221746.28805@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 92 03:25:17 GMT
Lines: 22

In article <1992Mar24.221746.28805@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM> mgf@ipsaint.ipsa.reuter.COM 
(Gfeller, Martin (zurich K6,network Prod)) writes:
>Restricting all functions to a fixed valence won't cure all parsing problems,
>because of operators. Consider: f g A, where A is an array. This can be parsed
>as
>
>    monadic-function monadic-operator array
>
>or  monadic-function monadic-function array
>
>even if f and g are know to be monadic. Making all functions and operators
>dyadic would help though.
>
>(A cure for this ... looks Lispy))).

I don't think this would be a problem for transliteration.  As for parsing,
could not  g A  be considered a unit, regardless of g's type?  I.e. a monadic
operator g applied to an array A is a special "curried form" that is passed as
argument to a function f.  (We won't know g A's type until run time.)


-- Bill Chang (wchang@cshl.org)          Cold Spring Harbor Lab., NY
