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Re: octothorpe array syntax; other comments bear 14 Nov 2003 21:35 UTC


On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Per Bothner wrote:

>bear wrote:
>
>> #,(array
>>   #( #( a0 a1 a2)
>>      #( b0 b1 b2)
>>      #( c0 c1 c2)))
>>
>> Is a better notation -- more general and extensible, and
>> requires less special reader support.  No need to mention
>> rank and size; those are implicitly given by the structure.
>
>How would you handle 0*N arrays?

  Do I understand correctly?  You mean An array of no elements, whose
every element is an array of N elements?

  Why is this different from or more useful than any other kind of
array of no elements?

  I am aware that you can get such entities as a result in matrix
operations, but I had always (perhaps mistakenly?)  regarded them as a
degenerate case not useful for further processing, and so didn't feel
that they needed a source syntax.

				Bear