Re: choice of character for relational division
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 01:01:22 -0500
Message-ID: <zUHPh.298137$BK1.11377_at_newsfe13.lga>
"Marshall" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1175401670.752367.58550_at_y66g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
I used to feel the same way, but I've become symbol-agnostic over the years.
:-)
> On Mar 31, 6:04 pm, "Bruce C. Baker" <bcbake..._at_cox.net> wrote:
>> "Marshall" <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote in message
>>
>> Why restrict yourself to one ASCII character? Why not something
>> unambiguous
>> like "reldiv", e.g.,
>>
>> C := A reldiv B
>
> I don't like alphabetical strings for infix operators.
>
> 3 plus 2 times 5
>
> Yuck.
>
> Anyway, the number of characters or choice of characters doesn't
> determine the ambiguity.
I meant "ambiguity in isolation", so to speak; "+", for instance, can mean addition and/or string concatenation, depending on the language. Even restricting the symbol to *only* addition, it can be and usually is overloaded to mean int+int, float+float, int+float, and float+int.
>
> 3+2*5
>
> Pretty clear what that means.
Depends on operator precedence, if any, and whether you parse right to left or vice versa.
>
> Single character symbols with no obvious algebraic operation
> associated:
>
> ! _at_ # $
http://www.jsoftware.com/index.html
"ASCII APL", in a very approximate way of speaking.
>
> I'll pick one of those. Okay, it's $.
>
Your choice, of course,and FW( little )IW I'm cool with that.
(I'm not trying to rain on your parade, Marshall; just pointing out that all
the good operators have been taken! :-) )
>
> Marshall
>
>
>
Received on Sun Apr 01 2007 - 08:01:22 CEST