Posted by dorayme on 04/29/07 22:48

In article <5y0Zh.155715$nv2.31010@reader1.news.saunalahti.fi>,
"Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote:

> Scripsit dorayme:
>
> > In article <TmkYh.44722$YY7.25263@reader1.news.saunalahti.fi>,
> > "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
> >
> >> A table is logically a list of lists
> >
> > A table certainly contains lists. It may even contain a list of
> > lists. But, I am having trouble believing it is (logically) a
> > list of lists.
>
> Note that my text continues, after the piece quoted above: "with the
> same number of items and with some meaningful relationship across the inner
> lists so that the n'th items in inner lists have some connection with each
> other".
>
> Thus, a table is _more_ than a list of lists, as explained above. We could
> also describe this by saying that a table is a list of lists _in two ways_:
> a list of rows, which are lists, and a list of columns, which are lists. But
> there's still more: the relationship I mentioned above.
>

In my post to which you reply, I had hoped to make clear that I
thought that a table, in a logical sense, contains lists. And
that there are relationships between the list items. And that a
table is special in that it does exhibit these relationships. So
far all is agreed. I just think it is a little confusing to
describe the table as being, logically, a list of lists as if
somehow it is a list, the list items being lists. Perhaps it is a
simple terminological query.


> > A list of lists in the sense in which we have become familiar on
> > this newsgroup would perhaps be a nested list.
>
> If "nested list" means more than a list of lists, then it means a particular
> _rendering_ of such a construct. Apparently, for a table, which is _more_
> than a list of lists, namely with relationships across the lists, such
> rendering is usually not optimal.

Perhaps this is what I was worried about and more, I was thinking
that it would be perhaps impossible, not just impractical, to
represent a table as a complex list. But it is a difficult matter
to think through. Certainly little practical hangs on it.

--
dorayme

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