mushing for code (and data) golf

the "mushing" in:
http://hostilefork.com/2010/01/08/modest-proposal-for-code-golf-in- 
rebol/
is a cute hack which I've seen Iverson use in APL for data, creating  
implicit vectors-of-vectors, eg. the cycle representation of a  
permutation.

Chuck Moore apparently started thinking along these lines in section  
8.1 "word dissection" of:
http://www.colorforth.com/POL.htm
and his 8.2 "level definitions" was groping towards precedence- 
climbing parsing, as used by Martin Richards to great effect in BCPL  
(and, later, MCPL)
cf http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-discuss/2012-May/ 
001233.html
but evidently he eventually wanted more colors than were available  
from just two cases.

It's probably just as well that no one is mushing unicode!

-Dave

(single letter defaults were also present in FORTRAN --GOD is REAL  
unless declared INTEGER--; my theory is that 110 baud teletypes made  
a level of terseness desirable that today is usually found only among  
code golfers and those --presumably few-- masochists who do not cross- 
compile to their phones)

-- 
To unsubscribe: http://lists.canonical.org/mailman/listinfo/kragen-discuss