Re: choice of character for relational division

"Marshall" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote in message news:1175401670.752367.58550_at_y66g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> 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.

I used to feel the same way, but I've become symbol-agnostic over the years. :-)

>
> 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:
>
> ! @ # $

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 - 01:01:22 CDT