# APL on Acanthae (was Re: Lisp on Lines) **URL:** \ **Category:** ruby-talk\ **Created:** [27 July 2005 17:35 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/apl-on-acanthae-was-re-lisp-on-lines/19772 "2005-07-27T17:35:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Devin\_Mullins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/958977/32.png) [@Devin\_Mullins](https://rubytalk.org/u/Devin_Mullins)\ **Post date:** [27 July 2005 17:35 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/apl-on-acanthae-was-re-lisp-on-lines/19772/1 "2005-07-27T17:35:13Z")
> Choosing a comment of Dijkstra on APL is as valid having the creator of > COBOL comment on Ruby. It's just irrelevant. Fair point. It's funny, though! Sorry to be so negative about the language. I really haven't looked into it much so I shouldn't be so harsh to judge. Didn't fully understand the example, but I appreciated it, anyhow. Point taken, however. Though I may not (yet) dig using APL as a language to write anything longer than one line, it is really good at many one-liners, and certain things that require a lot of typing to say something stupid could easily be abstracted into a more comprehensive Array library, say. That's where array \* :+ came from, and there are probably more like it. > It only matters when the iterator (ãàÏÊnjectãà in this case) > passes more than two arguments to the block. ...right? Yeah, right. I'm on crack, nevermind. > There are lots and lots and lots of examples. To choose > just one, Java overloads + non-commutatively for strings: Yeah, okay, I'm still on crack. > It's not okay with me. 🙂 > I'd much rather have the ãàãàoperator not perform any > truncation, and use ãà.div 2ãàto get integer division. Ditto. Doesn't Pascal act like this? > > One could use the original keyword like one uses the > > super keyword. > > That's a great idea. I really like it. The idiom is so > common and ugly that it definitely could use some sugar. Great! Now go write an RCR for me. :Q Devin I have no idea where my webmail gets all those funky "ãàãà" characters from.