Semantics of Array Prototypes

General APL language issues
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baingeenej
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Joined: Fri May 13, 2022 9:33 am

Semantics of Array Prototypes

Post by baingeenej »

Over on the APL Orchard, I previously commented, "Nice. Prepending an empty vector lets us control the prototype of a potentially empty vector." However, Adám cautioned, "Relying on that seems dangerous. Better prepend a cell of the type you want, and then dropping (sic) it."

My takeaway from the brief discussion was that concatenation—and perhaps primitives more generally—only have a implementation-defined semantics when operating on two empty arguments, but I suspect this characterization is a bit over-eager.

What parts of primitive operations on empty arrays are considered stable and which parts are considered Wild West™?

Cheers in advance.
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