Extensions of variables and indexing conventions

Data manipulation requires extreme flexibility of organization, but often at a price of rigid formats, either in working variables, or secondary storage, or both. In any computer language certain tasks are made easier by the richness of available operators, and the available primitives of APL are many and powerful. Additionally APL removes many of the 'memory allocation' rigidities of compiled languages; there are few questions of dimension and type to interfere with problem solution. It becomes natural under such circumstances to consider data manipulations in APL, which requires either additional syntax or drastic changes in approach.