[Jprogramming] Definition: Frame of an argument

[Roger Hui]

My free advice is to avoid the term "empty frame".  Too easily confused
with the case where the frame (outer shape) has a 0.

The phrase arose in the milieu where "empty array" was all the rage.
 "Empty frame" made sense when a frame was the axes of an array left over
after you've accounted for the cell.  Then the meaning of "frame" was
changed to be the outer shape, but the meaning of "empty frame" was not
similarly updated.

My free advice is worth every penny.




On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 11:54 AM, robert therriault <bobtherriault at mac.com>
wrote:

> Yep and it would have an empty frame, correct?
>
> One of the big challenges of being human is to be able to turn down the
> pattern matching skills, so that patterns that do emerge are accurate. You
> see item and atom and you think - Are those related because they differ by
> one letter? Sometimes it helps, sometimes not so much.
>
> Cheers, bob
>
> > On Jan 20, 2016, at 11:36 AM, Raul Miller <rauldmiller at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think the maximal cell would be the entire array?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > --
> > Raul
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 2:20 PM, robert therriault
> > <bobtherriault at mac.com> wrote:
> >> Raul
> >>
> >> I took the non-trivial note on maximal to mean that there could be more
> than one item in the cell. Maximal would be the entire cell. It does leave
> the possibility that atoms could also be items though :-)
> >>
> >> Cheers, bob
> >>
> >>> On Jan 20, 2016, at 10:56 AM, Raul Miller <rauldmiller at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I thought arrays could hold multiple items? (# counts items?)
> >>>
> >>> Thanks,
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Raul
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 12:17 PM, R.E. Boss <r.e.boss at outlook.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>>> From: Programming [mailto:programming-bounces at forums.jsoftware.com]
> >>>>> On Behalf Of Roger Hui
> >>>>> Sent: maandag 18 januari 2016 20:36
> >>>>> To: Programming forum <programming at jsoftware.com>
> >>>>> Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] Definition: Frame of an argument
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Among old timers, "frame" has an historical ambiguity.
> >>>> (...)
> >>>>> To document
> >>>>> the latter, Dyalog resurrected "outer shape".  Dyalog also
> resurrected
> >>>>> "major cell" because "item" already has an entrenched different
> meaning in
> >>>>> the APL2 family.
> >>>>
> >>>> I always loved the analogy between "atom" and "item", short for the
> minimal and maximal (non-trivial) cell.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> R.E. Boss
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