Re:The Q Language
by kazinator on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @08:41PM
(#15911299)
They have a whole language there, didn't you notice? Namely, this Q thing that the submission is about.
What we're looking at here is some of its C implementation internals. They are using short identifiers and the C preprocessor to help with terseness. The justification is that this is "like APL". But there is enough C cruft there that it's not really like APL. A possibility would be to generate whatever code those C macros are generating, but with some other preprocessor which polishes the notation a little bit.
Even if those analysis tools and debuggers were developed for Q, they likely wouldn't apply to this code.
Re:The Q Language
by kazinator on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @11:40PM
(#15912068)
The point (mine, that is) is that I basically agree that it's not a good way to code in C, but perhaps the style could work better as a notation that transliterates to C.
What we're looking at here is some of its C implementation internals. They are using short identifiers and the C preprocessor to help with terseness. The justification is that this is "like APL". But there is enough C cruft there that it's not really like APL. A possibility would be to generate whatever code those C macros are generating, but with some other preprocessor which polishes the notation a little bit.
Even if those analysis tools and debuggers were developed for Q, they likely wouldn't apply to this code.