QNial7 Array Language Announcement

2 points

9 years ago

Q'Nial, the language interpreter developed at Queen's University for the Nested Interactive Array Language, Nial is now available in a revised version that supports both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. The open source code can be used to build versions for both Unix and Windows operating system.

Nial is a very high level, general purpose, language based on a formal model of Array theory, developed by Michael Jenkins and Trenchard More, that influenced the development of APL2. Q'Nial is a C based interpreter with efficient, tuned, implementations of basic array operations.

As such it supports computations of large data sets that can be numeric or symbolic data. The programming style is highly functional but can be used in an interactive way to experiment on data and build functions incrementally. It combines concepts from APL, Lisp and functional programming and supports Algol-like control structures.

The implementation is competitive with other array languages such as J and APL as well as other interpreted languages with array libraries (Python/Numpy, Lua/Torch).

Nial has been used for rapid prototyping in areas as diverse as insurance underwriting, question/answering systems, composing music in a specific style, and a variety of artificial intelligence applications.

The repository is located at:

http://www.github.com/danlm/QNial7

This repository includes binaries for OSX, Linux, Windows, and Raspbian that can be downloaded and used directly.

Coordinator: Daniel Martin

Contributors: Mike Jenkins John Gibbons Stu Smith