I

From APL Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search


I is an experimental language by Marshall Lochbaum, based on the concept of extending the implicit mapping used by array languages to all datatypes including functions. Lochbaum has described the language as "not usable" and stated that he tried to avoid the constraining nature of I's design decisions in his later language BQN.[2] New I features that later appeared in other languages (not always by direct influence) include the 2-train meaning Atop, Hook and Constant operators, and the ambivalent Pair function.

Like K, the language uses nested lists rather than arrays in order to simplify the design. Although a related paper defines mapping over associative arrays, references, and sets, as of 2021 the I implementation only supports lists and functions as datatypes. I uses a left-to-right syntax that allows whitespace to indicate precedence in addition to parentheses. Every value can be called as a function, and every function takes two arguments, with the function . used to call functions of one argument. Primitive functions are written with single ASCII characters, while identifiers are surrounded with single quotes. I has no function definition syntax; instead functions must be defined using tacit programming. As a result there is only a single global scope for variables.

I is implemented using soft typing and JIT compilation for many operations, targetting x86-64 directly.

References


APL dialects [edit]
Maintained APL+WinAPL2APL64APL\ivApletteAprilCo-dfnsDyalog APLDyalog APL Visiondzaima/APLGNU APLKapNARS2000Pometo
Historical A Programming LanguageA+ (A) ∙ APL#APL2CAPL\360APL/700APL\1130APL\3000APL.68000APL*PLUSAPL.jlAPL.SVAPLXExtended Dyalog APLIverson notationIVSYS/7090NARSngn/aplopenAPLOperators and FunctionsPATRowanSAXSHARP APLRationalized APLVisualAPL (APLNext) ∙ VS APLYork APL
Derivatives AHPLBQNCoSyELIGleeIIvyJJellyK (Goal, Klong, Q) ∙ KamilaLispLang5LilNialRADUiua
Overviews Comparison of APL dialectsTimeline of array languagesTimeline of influential array languagesFamily tree of array languages