Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
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From: gurr@newsparc6 (David Gurr 4-6989 MR Sys)
Subject: Re: APL and IDL
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Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 13:56:43 GMT
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I will have to dis-agree with the posters who feel that IDL and
Matlab are APL-like.  Beyond being able to do simple arithmetric
operations on arrays I see little resemblance.  If I remember
correctly they do not support arbitrary dimensioned arrays,
do not have cohearant support for empty arrays, have a strong
set of structural functions, etc.  Most importantly, in my
judgement, they lack operators.  A much more APL-like 
language is ScratchpadII, now named AXIOM.  For better or
worse, APL is still virtually unique, as far as I can tell.
-David Gurr

