[Bug-apl] "SYSTEM_LIMIT (fun_oper)" error

[Frederick H Pitts]

Gentle people,

        When I attempt to run the attached life.apl.gz (after uncompressing)
with

        apl -f life.apl

partial output occurs and then "SYSTEM LIMIT (fun_oper) appears with the
offending apl statement after that.  Investigation of the interpreter
source code reveals the "SYSTEM LIMIT (fun_oper)" message is emitted
because more than 16 operators are present in the apl statement as well
there should be since the statement was generated by catenating together
120 strings containing 4 dyadic each operators (¨) per string.
Admittedly this apl program is a contrived one-liner of Conway's "Game
of Life", but I can foresee the 16 operators per APL statement being too
restrictive for some "real" applications. Experimenting on my own, I
raised the limit to 4096 with no negative consequences that I could see.
What is the resource that is going to limit how many operators can
appear in a given statement and is 16 a reasonable number for that
limit?  I hope the limit can be several orders of magnitude higher than
16.

        If anyone is interested in running the program, run it as shown above
in a 43 by 132 ansi terminal with a huge scrollback buffer.  After the
program completes, scroll to where the output starts and then page down
one screen at a time to see how "life" evolves.  I've initialized the
game with the R-pentomino which generates lots of activity and takes
1103 generations to become stable.  Of course you will have to increase
the MAX_FUN_OPER parameter in SystemLimits.def to run more than 3 or 4
generations.

Regards,

Fred Pitts
Retired Chemical Engineer

life.apl.gz
Description: application/gzip