Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
Path: watmath!watserv2.uwaterloo.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!csi!sam
From: sam@csi.jpl.nasa.gov (Sam Sirlin)
Subject: Re: APL and IDL
Message-ID: <1992Nov13.165845.27166@csi.jpl.nasa.gov>
Originator: sam@kalessin
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Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
References: <16946@umd5.umd.edu> <1992Nov13.135643.9898@mr.med.ge.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 16:58:45 GMT
Lines: 30


In article <1992Nov13.135643.9898@mr.med.ge.com>, gurr@newsparc6 (David Gurr 4-6989 MR Sys) writes:
|> 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.

You are right that APL, especially the operator concept, goes far
beyond Matlab. On the other hand, the simple ideas that were
implemented - interactive, with a workspace, not requiring silly
dimension statements, ability to deal with vectors and matrices "like
scalars," - togther with some innovations that I wish APL would have -
extremely easy extensibility (.m files), and relatively easy (or at
least possible) use of external routines (Fortran, C) (this is just
now possible in many APL systems these days but certainly isn't
settled yet)- have led it and its decendants to take over the controls
community. I miss the lack of operators, but for most people that
don't really want to program at all and are used to Fortran they seem
too strange and difficult. Even the "mundane" computing community seem
unenthused. 

-- 
Sam Sirlin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory         sam@kalessin.jpl.nasa.gov

