From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: why are there [v e c t o r s] in Lisp? Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2015 17:18:55 +0200 Organization: Informatimago Message-ID: <876125cylc.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> References: <87oafzpqfj.fsf@debian.uxu> <87lhb2cjy5.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> <876126w0t8.fsf@debian.uxu> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1445095230 12889 80.91.229.3 (17 Oct 2015 15:20:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2015 15:20:30 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Oct 17 17:20:26 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ZnTHW-0005IZ-As for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 17:20:26 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:58637 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZnTHV-0001qs-MK for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 11:20:25 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 27 Original-X-Trace: individual.net ch6EepYUJSkJL5xzix/PiA/zRjQnyL16ULQbfH+6cB8y2ZqaUQ Cancel-Lock: sha1:MGQ3YmU4NDViZGU2MjRiOTUxNzc1ZWM5Yzk3ZDMyZmY3NDZjZDBiMA== sha1:qYsV6xNcy2W8qZV6GGi3Jdm3kYc= Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAAAwAQMAAABtzGvEAAAABlBMVEUAAAD///+l2Z/dAAAA oElEQVR4nK3OsRHCMAwF0O8YQufUNIQRGIAja9CxSA55AxZgFO4coMgYrEDDQZWPIlNAjwq9 033pbOBPtbXuB6PKNBn5gZkhGa86Z4x2wE67O+06WxGD/HCOGR0deY3f9Ijwwt7rNGNf6Oac l/GuZTF1wFGKiYYHKSFAkjIo1b6sCYS1sVmFhhhahKQssRjRT90ITWUk6vvK3RsPGs+M1RuR mV+hO/VvFAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg== X-Accept-Language: fr, es, en User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:215424 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:107707 Archived-At: Emanuel Berg writes: > "Pascal J. Bourguignon" > writes: > >> The essence of vector is to define a direction and >> a magnitude. Notably for vector spaces without >> a finite basis, V/|V| is still the direction of the >> vector V, intrinsically (every unitary vector is >> a distinct direction). > > Yes, but perhaps what Aurélien Aptel said (vectors in > linear algebra being a tool concept to model just > about anything) is analogous to the vectors of Elisp > being data structures that can hold data for virtually > any purpose? And then, why aren't the Elisp vectors > simply called "arrays" like everywhere else? Because everybody else got it wrong: they don't have (multidimensional) arrays, they only have vectors (even when they have syntactic sugar to make vectors of vectors, they aren't arrays). -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/ “The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.” -- Carl Bass CEO Autodesk