Re: Lists, dictionaries, tables and lists of dictionaries

[sstantoncook]

Hi Simon,

 

I agree with Rian in term of the generalisation of k data types. I.e.

• Atom is a scalar representation of a data type.
• List is a vector representation of an Atom.
• Dictionary is a keyed set of lists. The key can be a List of any type. The values can a list of any type, a list of lists and list of Dictionaries.
• Table is a List of commonly keyed Dictionaries. You can see this easily when you put two dictionaries in a list, or enlist one of them.

Your point about apply (@;.) – in both cases, dictionaries and lists, it works by indexing.

Dictionaries require the key value to index and apply the function.

Lists require the index to index to apply the function.