Array programming: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:06, 13 August 2004

Revision as of 22:31, 13 August 2004

Line 1:

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

[[APL programming language|APL]], by [[KenKenneth E. Iverson|Ken Iverson]], iswas the originalfirst [[programming language]] thatto providedprovide Array Programming capabilities,.

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.

Array Programming primitives concisely express broad ideas about data manipulation. The level of conciseness can be dramatic in certain cases: it is not uncommon to find Arrayarray programming language [[one-liner program]]s that require more than a couple of pages of Java code.

Array Programming is very well suited to implicit parallelization; a topic of much research nowadays.