Re: [Bug-apl] Feature suggestion: multiple function arguments

[Juergen Sauermann]

Hi Alexey,

as Christian has pointed out, the IBM APL2 equivalent of Dyalog's

∇multi(a1 a2 a3)

is:

∇multi a
(a1 a2 a3)←a

IMHO a language does not get any better if it provides
different syntactic constructs for (almost) the same thing. The complexity of the
language is being increased without a noticeable benefit. I would also claim
that the best languages are not those that have the most features, bit those
that have a clean (and, minimal) structure.

/// Jürgen

On 03/03/2016 11:17 PM, Alexey Veretennikov wrote:

Hi,

In GNU APL in order to supply several (>2) arguments to the function I
have to write something like this:

∇multi a;a1;a2;a3
a1←a[1]
a2←a[2]
a3←a[3]
⍕a1
⍕a2
⍕a3

In Dyalog APL I can just write
∇multi(a1 a2 a3)
⍕a1
⍕a2
⍕a3

The same syntax in GNU APL lead to an errer in function header. Can we
have the same syntax as in the Dyalog APL since it looks like it will not break any compatibility?