(APL) A language designed originally by Ken Iverson
at
Harvard University in 1957-1960 as a notation for the
concise expression of mathematical algorithms. It went
unnamed (or just called
Iverson's Language) and
unimplemented for many years. Finally a subset, APL\360, was
implemented in 1964.
APL is an
interactive array-oriented language and
programming environment with many innovative features. It was
originally written using a non-standard
character set.
It is
dynamically typed with
dynamic scope. APL
introduced several functional forms but is not purely functional.
Dyadic Systems APL/W is one of the languages that will be
available under
Microsoft's
.NET initative.
ISO 8485 is the 1989 standard defining the language.
Versions: APL\360, APL SV,
Dyalog APL, VS APL, Sharp APL,
Sharp APL/PC, APL*PLUS, APL*PLUS/PC, APL*PLUS/PC II, MCM APL,
Honeyapple, DEC APL, Cognos
APL2000, IBM
APL2.
See also
Kamin's interpreters.
APLWEB translates
WEB to
APL.
Dijkstra said that APL was a language designed to perfection
- in the wrong direction.
["A Programming Language", Kenneth E. Iverson, Wiley, 1962].
["APL: An Interactive Approach", 1976].