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Thursday, April 2, 2009

Step One: Insert Foot in Mouth

This is a follow up to my Your Fancy Language is Burdensome and Dangerous post.

Python and Ruby don't have the APL array/vector/matrix syntax built in to the core language. But a little nudge from someone made me do the little bit of research I should have done before I wrote that post. And I rediscovered that I did not originate the idea that these languages need array/matrix math syntax thought.

There is a gem for Ruby called NArray and an egg for Python called Numpy that not only add array syntax but also coherent coercion rules and the ability to apply functions across arrays without calling map. I'm glad I found it because they are easy as pie to use and do exactly what I wanted and a heck of a lot more.

Check out this Python example:

from numpy import *
a = array([1,2,3])
b = array([4,5,6])
print a+b #equals array([5,7,9])
print (a+b)/4
print (a+b)%6

Outputs
[5,7,9]
[1,1,2]
[5,1,3]

As you can see Numpy also replicates the integer type bug/feature which is very C like but is being dropped in Python 3000 in favor of coercing integers to float on divide. You can typecast the divisor to float to get floating point division and float results.