Re: [q-lang-users] Q 7.2 RC1 Issue 2: Notation

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

John Cowan wrote:
> I'm okay with %.  Although it is used in C-ish languages including Perl,
> the operation is not exactly common anywhere.

Exactly.

> And if you tilt your head
> a bit to the left, % even looks like a division sign.

Yes.

> That reminds me.  Thinking about | gave me to wonder: since improper
> tuples like (1|2) are not stored contiguously, and the 2 is not accessible
> with !, do they really make any sense?  Ancient Lisp tradition requires us
> to allow improper lists like [A|B], but I think improper tuples should go,
> and improper streams as well.

"Improper" tuples are vital in symbolic computations, e.g., you will 
often find them as a pattern in lambdas or "case" constructs. Redefining 
this syntax to something else would thus not only raise orthogonality 
concerns, it would also kill Q's reflective capabilities.

> (My current plan for the Q egg is to treat improper tuples as opaque
> objects, whereas ordinary tuples will be mapped to Chicken vectors.)

I don't think that this is a good idea, for the reason sketched out above.

Albert

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