APL2 in Depth

by Norman D. Thomson, Raymond P. Polivka

Overview

This book is designed for people with a working knowledge of APL who would like to increase their fluency in the wide range of extra facilities offered by second-generation APL products. Although the primary product in view is IBM's APL2 as implemented on mainframe, PC and RS/6000, the language fea­ tures covered share considerable common ground with APL *PLUS II and Oyalog APL. This is a book about skills rather than knowledge, and an acquaintance with some variety of APL on the reader's part is assumed from the start. It is designed to be read as a continuous text, interspersed with exer­ cises designed to give progressively deeper insight into what the authors conceive as the features which have the greatest impact on programming techniques. It would also be suitable as a text-book for a second course in APL2, although experience suggests that most programming language learning is now by self­ study, so that this volume is more likely to provide follow-up reading to more elementary texts such as "APL2 at a Glance" by Brown, Pakin and Polivka. Material is discussed more informally than in a language manual - in this book textual bulk is in proportion to difficulty and importance rather than to the extent of technical details. Indeed, some APL2 extensions are not covered at all where the technicalities pose no great problems in understanding and can be readily assimilated from the language manuals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780387942131
Publisher:	Springer New York
Publication date:	06/13/1995
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1995
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.02(d)

Table of Contents

1 Functions and Arrays in APL2.- 1.1 Nested Arrays and Depth.- 1.2 Construction of Arrays.- Exercises 1a.- Exercises 1c.- 1.3 Selection.- Exercises 1d.- 1.4 Replacement.- 1.5 Restructuring.- 1.6 Comparison and Inquiry.- Exercises 1e.- Summary of Functions used in Chapter 1.- 2 Operators.- 2.1 The Each Operator.- Exercises 2a.- Exercises 2b.- 2.2 Extensions to the Slash Operator.- Exercises 2c.- Summary of Functions used in Chapter 2.- 3 Elementary Data Structuring.- 3.1 Example 1. Product Sks.- Exercises 3a.- 3.2 Example 2. Optimizing Rental Charges.- Exercises 3b.- Summary of Functions used in Chapter 3.- 4 Using Functions and Arrays.- 4.1 Cross-sections, Picking and Indexing.- 4.2 Some Illustrations using Nested Arrays.- Exercises 4a.- Exercises 4b.- 4.3 Distinctions between Similar Primitives.- Exercises 4c.- 4.4 Empty Arrays and Fill Functions.- Exercises 4d.- Summary of Functions used in Chapter 4.- 5 Using Operators.- 5.1 The Role of Operators in APL2.- 5.2 Binding.- Exercises 5a.- 5.3 Matching Function Arguments.- 5.4 Recursion with Functions and Operators.- Exercises 5b.- 5.5 Extensions to First-generation APL Operators.- Exercises 5c.- Exercises 5d.- 5.6 Applications of User-Defined Operators.- Exercises 5e.- Exercises 5f.- Summary of Functions used in Chapter 5.- Summary of User-defined Operators in Chapter 5.- 6 Advanced Modelling and Data Structures.- 6.1 Trees Without Keys.- 6.2 Trees with Keys.- 6.3 Binary Trees.- Exercises 6a.- 6.4 Networks.- Exercises 6b.- Summary of Operations used in Chapter 6.- Appendix A. Solutions to Exercises.- Solutions 1a.- Solutions 1b.- Solutions 1c.- Solutions 1d.- Solutions 1e.- Solutions 2a.- Solutions 2b.- Solutions 2c.- Solutions 3a.- Solutions 3b.- Solutions and Notes 4a.- Solutions 4b.- Solutions 4c.- Solutions 4d.- Solutions 5a.- Solutions 5b.- Solutions and Notes 5c.- Solutions 5d.- Solutions 5e.- Solutions 5f.- Solutions 6a.- Solutions 6b.- Appendix B. Some Key Rules and Identities.- Appendix C. List of Illustrations.