Anybody know what possible justification there could be for replacing 2 with H and so on in array literals (Table 1)? In general, a spec doc without an accompanying rationale doc seems emasculated.
My guess would be that the goal of the language designers was to make a language suitable for code golf - so short mnemonics that aren't confused with something else would be beneficial. Like if I see an H I know I'm looking at an array literal rather than the many things a 2 could be used for.
I just realized the example on the same page (page 6) hints at the answer:
"For example, [1H2J2j;YNG42A] gives [1 2 2 j 2j; inf NaN -j 42 5]."
Looks like the codes are to avoid printing spaces by alternating with digits. Ugh, but ok. Code golf. Sigh.