Array programming: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:37, 20 August 2005

Revision as of 23:01, 20 August 2005

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'''Array programming languages''' (also known as '''vector''' or '''multidimensional''' languages) generalize operations on [[scalar]]s to apply transparently to [[vector (spatial)|vector]]s, [[Matrix (mathematics)|matrices]], and higher dimensional arrays.

[[APL programming language|APL]], by [[Kenneth E. Iverson|Ken Iverson]], was the first [[programming language]] to provide Array Programming capabilities. Today, [[Fortran|Fortran 95]] and [[MATLAB|Matlab]] are probably the most widely used compiled and interpreted array programming languages.

The fundamental idea behind Array Programming is that operations apply at once to an entire set of values. This makes it a [[high-level programming]] model as it allows the programmer to think and operate on whole aggregates of data, without having to resort to explicit loops of individual scalar operations.