On 23 Feb 2009, at 12:38, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 01:09:34AM +0900, Ken Bloom wrote:
>>
>> "There are no precedence rules applied to operators, they are simply
>> evaluated from left to right. Operator precedence is explicity  
>> applied
>> with the use of parenthetical expressions. The following example
>> demonstrates explicit operator precedence."
>>
>> Looks like a cross between Ruby and INTERCAL. When  
>> 1.0+2.0/3.0+4.0=5.0,
>> that's not a good thing, and will confuse most mathemeticians to no  
>> end.
>> And the use of ^ for assignment will also be very unintuitive.
>
> This is why I tend to think that positional precedence should always  
> use
> named functions (or methods or whatever) instead of traditional
> mathematical sigils, and use either prefix or postfix notation.  For
> instance:
>
>    sum( quotient( sum( 1.0, 2.0 ), 3.0 ), 4.0 )
>
> . . . or as UCBLogo would put it:
>
>    sum quotient sum 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0


how about:

1 2 + 3 / 4 +

I always liked Forth's RPN simplicity :)


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason