Re: c.d.theory glossary -- definition of "class"

Marshall Spight wrote:
> I am in general agreement. But perhaps you can clarify something
> for me: how is an operator different from a function?
>
> ISTM that "function" is the term with the clearest definition
> and the longest history. I tend to use "function" and "operator"
> interchangably, but I can't help but have this nagging feeling
> that there is some nuance to the second term that I'm unaware
> of.

There's some discussion of this here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator

Basically it seems to be saying an operator is a function bundled with the types of its operands. I'm still don't entirely understand the distinction though. Maybe for a function you just specify the *set* of the operands rather than the *type*?

It says that "Functions can therefore conversely be considered operators, for which we forget some of the type baggage, leaving just labels for the domain and codomain". I'm not sure what it means by "labels" here.

Though further on it seems to say they mean the same thing and the word "operator" is just used by convention for things like functions that have functions as operands, or functions that have matrices as operands.

Paul. Received on Mon Jun 28 2004 - 20:15:46 CEST