Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
Path: watmath!watserv2.uwaterloo.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!bert.eecs.uic.edu!zmola
From: zmola@bert.eecs.uic.edu (Carl Zmola)
Subject: Re: APL and IDL
Message-ID: <1992Nov13.194044.29582@bert.eecs.uic.edu>
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
References: <16946@umd5.umd.edu> <1992Nov13.135643.9898@mr.med.ge.com> <1992Nov13.165845.27166@csi.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 19:40:44 GMT
Lines: 29

sam@csi.jpl.nasa.gov (Sam Sirlin) writes:

>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

	Rececntly I have been using Mathematica, and have been
impressed by it's approach to operators.  Mathematica seems to 
have been influenced greatly by APL and Lisp ( a funny combination).
I personally like the "feel" of APL, but I can't ignore the
powerful built in functions which Mathematica has, especially
the built in graphics.  That is my one complaint about the APL's
I have worked on(APL2 and Dyalog): they are still in a mainframe 
mentality, in a workstation(PC) world.  

	
		Carl
		zmola@bert.eecs.uic.edu

