From: gavino
Subject: can someone explain how lisp can do all this? or is APL in some way better?
Date: 
Message-ID: <1156657025.919363.143900@74g2000cwt.googlegroups.com>
http://www.sigapl.org/whyapl.htm

From: Pascal Bourguignon
Subject: Re: can someone explain how lisp can do all this? or is APL in some way better?
Date: 
Message-ID: <87ejv2vi2z.fsf@thalassa.informatimago.com>
"gavino" <········@yahoo.com> writes:

> http://www.sigapl.org/whyapl.htm

   (sort x (function <))

You can do:

   (defun ⍋ (x) (sort x (function <)))

and write:

   (⍋ x)

if you want the same conciseness.

(⍋ '(65 1 32 30 2 4 5 0 91 24)) --> (0 1 2 4 5 24 30 32 65 91)


(Well actually, the semantics are different. X[⍋X] builds a vector of
 sorted indices and then use it to build the new sorted vector (the
 APL compiler can of course optimize out the construct so it does the
 same as in lisp anyways)).


One classical function is:

(defun ⍳ (n)
   (labels ((gen (n r) (if (< n 1) r (gen (1- n) (cons n r)))))
       (gen n '())))

(⍳ 10) --> (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10)


Language-wise, there's not much in APL.  Everything is in the library
of functions working on vectors and arrays.  You could easily write the
same functions in lisp. 


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/

"This statement is false."            In Lisp: (defun Q () (eq nil (Q)))
From: Frank Buss
Subject: Re: can someone explain how lisp can do all this? or is APL in some way better?
Date: 
Message-ID: <m8oyx6xhk9x6$.cxijpxb79gna$.dlg@40tude.net>
gavino wrote:

> http://www.sigapl.org/whyapl.htm

Could you stop posting your one-liner postings? If you want to start a nice
flame war or just trolling, try cross-posting to other newsgroups as well
or take a look at Xah Lee's essays :-)

-- 
Frank Buss, ··@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de
From: Jon Harrop
Subject: Re: can someone explain how lisp can do all this? or is APL in some way better?
Date: 
Message-ID: <44f250b1$0$3585$ed2e19e4@ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net>
gavino wrote:
> http://www.sigapl.org/whyapl.htm

Wow! That page compares APL to BASIC and Fortran. That's almost as bad as
Lisper's comparing Lisp to Java. ;-)

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
Objective CAML for Scientists
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists
From: Rob Thorpe
Subject: Re: can someone explain how lisp can do all this? or is APL in some way better?
Date: 
Message-ID: <1156759895.230737.167100@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>
Jon Harrop wrote:
> gavino wrote:
> > http://www.sigapl.org/whyapl.htm
>
> Wow! That page compares APL to BASIC and Fortran. That's almost as bad as
> Lisper's comparing Lisp to Java. ;-)

It was written in 1983, so it's understandable.