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 wrote:

Friends****

** **

Many of you will know the array language APLhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_%28programming_language%29. 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****

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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?****

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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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Dear Haskellers & APLers, On 03/08/2012 02:44 PM, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:

Friends

Many of you will know the array language APLhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_%28programming_language%29. 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. +1

If it may also be an opportunity to think of a standard, efficient type-class API for multidimensional arrays numeric programmers would find a new heaven in Haskell too. With type-level nats one could also hope to reach efficiency of FiSh or SAC compiler (if anyone remembers these functional wonders, that used type-level array shapes to improve efficiency of array computations beyond that of naive C-code.) Only one note would be that it is to be ultimately included in Haskell Platform, one needs a more permissive licence than that of HMatrix (since all HP packages are BSD3, I believe?) -- Best regards Michał J. Gajda yi, hPDB