Array notation design considerations: Difference between revisions

[[John Scholes]] sent an early draft of ''Dynamic Functions in Dyalog APL'' <ref>[[John Scholes|Scholes, John M.]] https://www.dyalog.com/uploads/documents/Papers/dfns.pdf Dynamic Functions in Dyalog APL]</ref> to [[Phil Last]]. Among the plethora of new ideas that this sparked, one had consequences entirely out of scope. The ability to write a multi-line function embedded in another with line-ends between paired braces hinted at the possibility to do a similar thing between brackets and parentheses to solve a problem for which Last had been seeking a solution for a decade.  

Having attempted to engage Dyalog in the idea of an array notation over several years Phil Last sent a proposal to John Scholes outlining two possible executable notations for creating multi-dimensional arrays without function application. One using potential new system construct :Array and :Cell to be used in tradfns and another using line-ends between balanced brackets to define arrays of rank-2 or greater in both dfns and tradfns.

:''... I agree that APL could really do with a primitive mechanism for specifying higher rank literal values''

It became RFE 9458: Proposal for a mechanism to specify large and higher rank literal values directly in code.