Designing Perl 6 data crunching (was Re: n-dim matrices)

Baris wrote:
> First of all I know that perl syntax has limitations and I understand why
> the reasons of the new syntax proposals. And I think the syntax proposals
> are pretty good if you accept the syntax limitations. I don't think any of
> them do consider that if somebody will write a PDL program he will use pdl
> constructs and functions 99% of the time. So it should be user friendly
and
> this requires some radical changes in perl. But it looks like I am the
only
> one supporting this idea.
>
We're talking about how we'll write Perl 6 programs, not PDL programs. We
need to ensure that the syntax we create is Perlish. It needs to fit in with
the rest of the language--our proposals won't get through if programs look
quite different in sections just because arrays in those sections have an
extra dimension.

Creating a 'user friendly' data-crunching language should not be about just
catering to Matlab users, or those needing to implement FFTs... I hope that
we can make Perl more useful for all the people who have to analyse their
web logs, or summarise their customer segments, or review survey results, or
any of the many things Mere Mortals want to do. Effective array notation in
Perl should make these things easy, fast, and intuitive to Perl users.