• AboutApl

About APL

APL is A Programming Language, derived from a mathematical notation developed at Harvard in the 1950s and published in a book of the same name by wiki:Kenneth_E._Iverson.

It is distinguished by

• extreme terseness
• defining its primitives over arrays

• the use of [:SpecialCharacters:special glyphs] to denote its primitive functions

• extensive use of higher-order functions

The original APL\1130 spawned [:/AplsAndRelatedLanguages:many APLs and related languages]. It has also exercised a strong influence on wiki:WikiPedia/functional_Programming.

Related articles

• [:DiscoveringApl:Discovering APL]

• [:WhichApl:Which APL?]

• [:AplHistory:APL's History]

Other sources

• [wiki:WikiPedia/APL_programming_language Wikipedia article on APL]

• [http://home.earthlink.net/~swsirlin/apl.faq.html Sam Sirlin's APL FAQ]

• [http://elliscave.com/APL_J/tool.pdf Notation as a Tool of Thought] K.E. Iverson's 1979 Turing Award lecture (see also ClassicPapers)

CategoryAboutApl