Re: [FWP] APL vs. Perl. A query from a lazy programmer.

[Uri Guttman <uri@sysarch.com>]

>>>>> "IP" == Ian Phillipps <igp_list2@tesco.net> writes:

  IP> The topic of APL came up today, and I recalled an APL one-liner (about
  IP> 150 chars if I recall) that printed a set of 4 Bridge hands in the
  IP> conventional layout.

wow. i wrote one of those in apl back in '74! i was just learning it and
it seemed like an interesting project. but back then apl matrices were
always even which meant i had to pad list of suit card in 
each hands to work. so my code was more than a one liner, it was a
couple of subs. today apl can have ragged matrices (more like perl's
LoL). it would be amusing if possible to find that code but i am sure it
has gone to the bit bucket in the sky.


apl did have the best way to shuffle and deal a bridge hand. this is
very rough and pseudo and probably wrong but the flavor is right:

	13 4 R 52 ? i 52

where

	R is rho (reshape a matrix)
	? is deal (i don't remember how to make sure that is a deal and
		  not a list of random picks)
	i is iota (index - generates 1 .. 52)

so that shuffles 1 .. 52 and reshapes it into 4 hands of 13. neat. can't
do that so easily in perl. i remember the formatting stuff was most of
the work due to the padding issues.

i will work on my perl version this weekend.

uri

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