Re: [Bug-apl] Suggestion for Quad-RE

[Juergen Sauermann]

Hi Elias,

I believe we consider the ⎕RE from two points of view. From a language or function
designer's point of view your focus is less on specific use cases but more on how well the function fits into the rest of the language. From a function user's point of view you care
more about use cases and the simplicity of use.

Before we dive too deeply into technical details let me ask you two questions:

1. would you agree that the result that is returned by pcre2_match() is a tree, regardless of
 how that tree is represented in the API of libpcre2?

2. Suppose you have to choose between two APL libraries libA and libB.

 libA provides a single function V←foo B that solves some problem in a generic way (so that
all use cases can be covered) but the result returned by foo may need to be adopted to
different use cases by means of simple APL operations such as 1↓foo B, N⍴foo B, etc.

libB does not provide the generic foo of libA but instead a number of different functions
foo1 returning 1↓foo B, function foo2 returning N⍴foo B, etc. Some rare use cases of
foo in libA that are not covered by one of the fooN functions in libB, but your project
does not need them.

Given these two libraries, you have to irrevocably decide between using libA or libB in
your project. What would be your decision?

/// Jürgen