Re: [q-lang-users] Newbie questions and comments

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Hi, Tim,

Tim Haynes wrote:
> Yup. No need to slave to the functional purity, here. (For example, I get
> the impression the libxml binding is impure - if you see `||' as a
> side-effect sequential operator, you get snippets of code that look like
> "destructively append a node here, || now return the new tree".)

Yup, actually the xml module is a fairly thin wrapper around libxml, so 
the manipulation of the xml trees indeed involves side-effects.

> Well, there *are* no undefined variables, you just get a symbol-name back

Yes, that's one of Q's ideosyncrasies you just have to get used to. (Not 
the worst one, I'm afraid. ;-)

> One bug-bear I have atm is still the debugger. I've got a classic weak-type
> problem, writing something that handles lists and tuples (a prototype
> generic FSM for my own amusement), and somewhere along the lines I've got
> my datatypes in a twist in the middle of a recursive call, and I just can't
> make head or tail of the debugging...

Sometimes printf is your best friend. But what's wrong with the 
debugger? This topic comes up every once in a while, so I'll be glad to 
improve it. But how?

> A random question: is there anything in Q like haskell's $ ? Ie., a
> right-associative do-very-little operator that obviates surplus
> parentheses?
> 
>  | foo (bar (qux X))  ==  foo $ bar $ qux X

Nope, not yet. Want one in the next release? :)

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikwissenschaft.uni-mainz.de/~ag