From 06b5904e470b5295a6f09b6f85f21cb8172e13be Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Marshall Lochbaum Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2021 14:08:49 -0400 Subject: class -> role in a few places --- docs/doc/context.html | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) (limited to 'docs/doc/context.html') diff --git a/docs/doc/context.html b/docs/doc/context.html index b08f70a0..1e73eced 100644 --- a/docs/doc/context.html +++ b/docs/doc/context.html @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ 
b(a, d(c)(e))
 (b a ((d c) e))
-

In each case, some values are used as inputs to functions while others are the functions being applied. The result of a function can be used either as an input or as a function again. These expressions correspond to the APL expression where a and e are arrays, b and c are functions, and d is a monadic operator. However, these syntactic classes have to be known to see what the APL expression is doing—they are a form of context that is required for a reader to know the grammatical structure of the expression. In a context-free grammar like that of simple C or Lisp expressions, a value's grammatical role is part of the expression itself, indicated with parentheses: they come after the function in C and before it in Lisp. Of course, a consequence of using parentheses in this way is having a lot of parentheses. BQN uses a different method to annotate grammatical role:

+

In each case, some values are used as inputs to functions while others are the functions being applied. The result of a function can be used either as an input or as a function again. These expressions correspond to the APL expression where a and e are arrays, b and c are functions, and d is a monadic operator. However, these syntactic roles have to be known to see what the APL expression is doing—they are a form of context that is required for a reader to know the grammatical structure of the expression. In a context-free grammar like that of simple C or Lisp expressions, a value's grammatical role is part of the expression itself, indicated with parentheses: they come after the function in C and before it in Lisp. Of course, a consequence of using parentheses in this way is having a lot of parentheses. BQN uses a different method to annotate grammatical role:

a B C _d e

Here, the lowercase spelling indicates that a and e are to be treated as subjects ("arrays" in APL) while the uppercase spelling of variables B and C are used as functions and _d is a 1-modifier ("monadic operator"). Like parentheses for function application, the spelling is not inherent to the variable values used, but instead indicates their grammatical role in this particular expression. A variable has no inherent spelling and can be used in any role, so the names a, A, _a, and _a_ all refer to exact same variable, but in different roles; typically we use the lowercase name to refer to the variable in isolation—all values are nouns when speaking about them in English. While we still don't know anything about what values a, b, c, and so on have, we know how they interact in the line of code above.

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