Interesting idea. It seems like building this on top of REPA would save a lot of work, since it has a native notion of "rank" encoded in the type system. I'd then see the APL-like combinators as a "niche" API for REPA, rather than as a library of their own. And of course, you'd get parallelization for free, more or less. I think some of the combinators on that wiki page already have counterparts in the REPA API.

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Simon Peyton-Jones <simonpj@microsoft.com> wrote:

Friends

Many of you will know the array language APL.   It focuses on arrays and in particular has a rich, carefully-thought-out array algebra.

An obvious idea is: what would a Haskell library that embodies APL’s array algebra look like? In conversation with John Scholes and some of his colleagues in the APL community a group of us developed some ideas for a possible API, which you can find on the Haskell wiki here: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/APL

However, we have all gone our separate ways, and I think it’s entirely possible that that the idea will go no further. So this message is to ask:

·         Is anyone interested in an APL-style array library in Haskell?

·         If so, would you like to lead the process of developing the API?

I think there are quite a few people who would be willing to contribute, including some core gurus from the APL community: John Scholes, Arthur Whitney, and Roger Hui.

Simon

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