Learning J (original) (raw)

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Copyright © Roger Stokes 2015. This material may be freely reproduced, provided that acknowledgment is made.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

This book is meant to help the reader to learn the computer-programming language J.

It is hoped that the book will be useful to a wide readership, from beginning programmers to experienced programmers. Beginning programmers will find examples at every step. Care is taken to to make the examples very simple and to introduce only one new idea at a time. Experienced programmers will find much to appreciate in the radical simplicity and power of the J notation.

The scope of the book is the core J language defined in the J Dictionary. The coverage of the core language is meant to be relatively complete, covering (eventually) most of the Dictionary.

Hence the book does not cover topics such as graphics, plotting, GUI, and database covered in the J User Guide, nor does it cover the J Application Library . I should make clear what the aims of the book are not: neither to teach the basics of programming, nor to study algorithms, or topics in mathematics or other subjects using J as a vehicle, nor to provide definitive reference material.

The book is organized as follows. Part 1 is a basic introduction which touches on a variety of themes. The aim is to provide the reader, by the end of Part 1, with an overview and a general appreciation of the J language. The themes introduced in Part 1 are then developed in more depth and detail in the remainder of the book.

All the examples have been executed with J701 or later.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to readers of earlier drafts for encouragement and for valuable criticisms and suggestions.

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