On Feb 23, 3:21 ¨Βν¬ ΕμεαξοΝγΘυηθ Όεμεα®®®ΐηανεσχιτθβςαιξσ®γονwrote: > On 23 Feb 2009, at 19:47, Chad Perrin wrote: > > > > > On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 09:48:44PM +0900, Eleanor McHugh wrote: > >> 1 2 + 3 / 4 + > > >> I always liked Forth's RPN simplicity :) > > > I don't much like combining postfix notation with right-to-left > > evaluation. ¨Β τεξδ το τθιξτθατ τθξοτατιοξ σθουμδ Άπςεγεδετθ> > operands in the direction in which operations are evaluated. ¨Βγουςσε> > that's more a matter of familiarity and comfort for me than any kind > > of > > objective criteria (other than consistency with traditional function > > notation), but it's how I feel. > > > In other words, if the operator notation is going to be placed to the > > right of the operands, I'd prefer operands be evaluated right-to-left. > > > Of course, I don't think *anyone* would like the way that would > > look, so > > that pretty much breaks down to preferring prefix notation over > > postfix > > notation. > > But postfix notation is just so natural: load operands on the stack; > operate on operands; get result from stack. Imagine how sweet Lisp > would be without all those damn parentheses: > > Brian Candler <b.cand... / pobox.com> writes: > > Sure. But why would anyone want to write something like > > > ¨Β > > > when they could just as easily have written > > > set! > > (quote a) > > (+ b c)) > > b c + set! a > > is much easier on the eye :) > > Ellie > > Eleanor McHugh > Games With Brainshttp://slides.games-with-brains.net > ---- > raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason The Nexus (left-to-right) assignment operator '^' is also referred to as the 'goes to' operator. The choice of symbol is meaningful, you might think of the '^' character as an arrow meaning the value you just put on the stack (the left side of the expression) 'goes to' to the memory location (i.e. variable) on the right-side of the expression (i.e. 123^x, 123 'goes to' x).