Subj : Apl2 For Os/2
To   : Mike Luther
From : Murray Lesser
Date : Fri Jun 01 2001 08:28 am

(Mike Luther wrote to All on 05-31-01, topic: "Apl2 For Os/2") 

Hi Mike--

> Looks like IBM posted a fully-functional (240 minute 
> timer) demo last
> week of their new version of the APL2 
> interactive programming language
> for OS/2:

> ftp://service.software.ibm.com/ps/products/apl2/demos/apl2demo

ML>Please do not shoot the messsage boy. 

ML>Now, so divulged, what is APL2?  Is this a variation on a 
  >PL whatever Lessor theme of weevils?  Grin!

    APL (A Programming Language) has been around since the 1960s (about
the same age as PL/I!).  It is known in some circles as a "write only"
language, because it is so concise, and uses such a strange symbol
set, that not even the people who wrote the program can read it later.
Its great strength is matrix and vector manipulation, but I've seen it
used to interrogate data bases, something I'd rather do with REXX.  Like
REXX, APL was designed, ab initio, to be an interpreted language, but
that is the only thing the two languages have in common.

    The original APL language was invented by Ken Iverson while he was
still at Harvard.  The first working implementation was made at IBM
Research after Iverson joined IBM.  APL2 must be an "improved" version
of the language.  It is most unlikely that the "2" has anything to do
with OS/2, as I have a 1991 demo of APL2 v 2.00 for DOS on a single
740KB diskette, that I have never tried to use.

   Jean Sammet, in her discussion of APL in her piece in the
"25th Anniversary Issue" (Vol. 25 No. 5, September 1981) of the "IBM
Journal of Research and Development" said: "...in spite of (or perhaps
because of) it's uniqueness, it has had virtually no effect on other
language design."  IMO, this is the polite way of saying that there was
nothing in APL that other language implementers felt was worth stealing
:-).

    But try it, you may like it.  Particularly if you have a need for a
language in which matrix and vector operations are "built-in," so that
very few programmed loops are required to solve the applications it is
good for.

    Regards,

        --Murray
<Team PL/I>
___
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