Reverse Compose (⍛), Before or Behind is a primitive operator closely related to Beside (∘), which appears in Extended Dyalog APL, dzaima/APL, April and Kap. Called dyadically with function operands f and g, it uses f monadically to pre-processes the left argument before applying g between the pre-processed left argument and the given right argument. X f⍛g Y is thus equivalent to (f X) g Y. The operator can be defined as the dop {(⍺⍺ ⍺) ⍵⍵ ⍵}. This dyadic definition matches the hook function Before, represented as ⊸ in BQN.
Unlike Before, the monadic case of Reverse Compose has differed across implementations. When introduced by Extended Dyalog APL, f⍛g Y evaluated to g Y, but the later Dyalog APL Vision, as well as April and Kap, define it to be (f Y) g Y, matching Before. This later definition might also be written f⍛g 
f⍛g⍨⍨ g⍨∘f⍨. In dzaima/APL the monadic case is simply an error.
Common usage
Its plain usage is to pre-process left arguments without needing one or more applications of Commute (⍨). For example, the square of the left argument minus the right argument can be expressed as:
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3×⍨⍛-2
7
It can also be combined with Beside to create the split-compose construct. Here, we take the sign of the left argument and apply it to (that is, multiply it with) the absolute value of the right argument:
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3 ¯1 4×⍛×∘|¯2 ¯7 1
2 ¯7 1
External links
Documentation
Publications
| APL built-ins [edit]
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| Primitives (Timeline) |
Functions
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| Scalar
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| Monadic
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Conjugate ∙ Negate ∙ Signum ∙ Reciprocal ∙ Magnitude ∙ Exponential ∙ Natural Logarithm ∙ Floor ∙ Ceiling ∙ Factorial ∙ Not ∙ Pi Times ∙ Roll ∙ Type ∙ Imaginary ∙ Square Root ∙ Round
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| Dyadic
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Add ∙ Subtract ∙ Times ∙ Divide ∙ Residue ∙ Power ∙ Logarithm ∙ Minimum ∙ Maximum ∙ Binomial ∙ Comparison functions ∙ Boolean functions (And, Or, Nand, Nor) ∙ GCD ∙ LCM ∙ Circular ∙ Complex ∙ Root
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| Non-Scalar
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| Structural
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Shape ∙ Reshape ∙ Tally ∙ Depth ∙ Ravel ∙ Enlist ∙ Table ∙ Catenate ∙ Reverse ∙ Rotate ∙ Transpose ∙ Raze ∙ Mix ∙ Split ∙ Enclose ∙ Nest ∙ Cut (K) ∙ Pair ∙ Link ∙ Partitioned Enclose ∙ Partition
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| Selection
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First ∙ Pick ∙ Take ∙ Drop ∙ Unique ∙ Identity ∙ Stop ∙ Select ∙ Replicate ∙ Expand ∙ Set functions (Intersection ∙ Union ∙ Without) ∙ Bracket indexing ∙ Index ∙ Cartesian Product ∙ Sort
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| Selector
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Index generator ∙ Grade ∙ Index Of ∙ Interval Index ∙ Indices ∙ Deal ∙ Prefix and suffix vectors
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| Computational
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Match ∙ Not Match ∙ Membership ∙ Find ∙ Nub Sieve ∙ Encode ∙ Decode ∙ Matrix Inverse ∙ Matrix Divide ∙ Format ∙ Execute ∙ Materialise ∙ Range
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| Operators |
Monadic
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Each ∙ Commute ∙ Constant ∙ Replicate ∙ Expand ∙ Reduce ∙ Windowed Reduce ∙ Scan ∙ Outer Product ∙ Key ∙ I-Beam ∙ Spawn ∙ Function axis ∙ Identity (Null, Ident)
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| Dyadic
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Bind ∙ Compositions (Compose, Reverse Compose, Beside, Withe, Atop, Over) ∙ Inner Product ∙ Determinant ∙ Power ∙ At ∙ Under ∙ Rank ∙ Depth ∙ Variant ∙ Stencil ∙ Cut ∙ Direct definition (operator) ∙ Identity (Lev, Dex)
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| Quad names
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Index origin ∙ Comparison tolerance ∙ Migration level ∙ Atomic vector
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