Jay Dee wrote:
> Bob Badour wrote:
>
>> Jay Dee wrote:
>>
>>> vc wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jay Dee wrote:
>>>>
>
>>> >> What's 'bunch theory' ?
>>>
>>> As for my own: scalars are boolean, numbers, and characters. Data
>>> may be structured (Here we go down the rabbit hole!) as:
>>> a bunch (unpackaged and unindexed),
>>> a set (packaged and unindexed),
>>> a string (unpackaged and indexed), and
>>> a list (packaged and indexed).
>>>
>>> More terminology? Well, bunches and sets consist of elements, which
>>> has the meaning we're familiar with from sets. Sets are sets; they
>>> are a package of elements constructed with {} operator. , (comma)
>>> is the set union operator. Unpackaging a set - interpolating the
>>> contents of a set - yields a bunch, which also has a comma union
>>> operator. So
>>> a, b, c is a bunch
>>> {a, b, c} is a set.
>>>
>>> The empty bunch is null and the empty set is {null}.
>>
>> I strongly suggest you avoid this use of null here, because it in no
>> way resembles the null used elsewhere in database theory.
>
>> Frankly, other than seemingly unimportant punctuation, I see no
>> difference between your set and your bunch. Is there an operational
>> difference?
>
> The whole point is that {} and , aren't punctuation; they're
> operators.
That's nice. What do the operators do? Anything?
Received on Thu May 11 2006 - 23:08:44 CDT
