Learning APL

 
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Learning APL
    Tutorial Contents
    Introduction to APL
    Entering symbols
    QuickSym popup
    Simple Arithmetic
    Variables
    Tables
    Writing a Function
    Overview of APL
    The Workspace
    Data
    Built-in Functions
    System Functions
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    User Functions
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    Error Handling
    Formatting
    Classes
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Trying APL

The APL tutorial will be most effective if you actually try the example code in an APL interpreter.

To download a time-limited evaluation copy of APLX, visit our Download page

PDF Version

If you would prefer to read this tutorial in a PDF version you can download it from here

Installing the APL font

To display the material in this tutorial properly, you need to ensure that (a) your browser can correctly handle Unicode (UTF-8) encoding, and (b) that you have a suitable APL Unicode font installed on your system.

Most modern Browsers (such as Internet Explorer 6 or later, Firefox v2 or later, Safari v3 or later) should be fine. However, we have found problems using Firefox v2 on the Macintosh (the Windows version is OK, and Firefox v3 on the Macintosh is OK).

APL code on this site is encoded using Unicode. It should display correctly provided you have at least one of these APL fonts installed on your system, in this order of preference:

• MicroAPL's APLX Upright Unicode font (http://www.microapl.co.uk/download/aplx_unicode.ttf). If you have installed a desktop version of APLX (full or evaluation copy), you will have this font installed already.

• Adrian Smith's APL385 Unicode font (http://www.vector.org.uk/resource/apl385.ttf)

If you don't have either of these fonts installed, our style sheets are set to fall back on Microsoft's Arial font, which does have the APL characters but is not a monospaced font. This means that code samples will display the correct characters, but may not be aligned correctly.

If you do not have any of the APL fonts listed nor Microsoft's Arial font, APL characters will not display properly.

Here's a sample of text which should display in the APL font:

    X ← 3 3⍴÷⍳9  ⋄ Y ← DATA[⍋DATA] ⍝ A comment

It should appear in your browser something like this:

If it looks more like this then you do not have the APL font installed: