From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2009-02-23T21:38:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Nexus Programming Language

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On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 01:09:34AM +0900, Ken Bloom wrote:
>=20
> "There are no precedence rules applied to operators, they are simply=20
> evaluated from left to right. Operator precedence is explicity applied=20
> with the use of parenthetical expressions. The following example=20
> demonstrates explicit operator precedence."
>=20
> Looks like a cross between Ruby and INTERCAL. When 1.0+2.0/3.0+4.0=3D5.0,=
=20
> that's not a good thing, and will confuse most mathemeticians to no end.=
=20
> 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 )

=2E . . or as UCBLogo would put it:

    sum quotient sum 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0

=2E . . or:

    sum (quotient (sum 1.0 2.0) 3.0) 4.0

=2E . . if you really want parentheses or need different numbers of
operands for each operator/function than the default two arguments.  In
the same language, you can still do:

    (1.0 + 2.0) / 3.0 + 4.0

=2E . . to get 5.0, if you really want to do it the traditional precedence
way.  I wish more languages offered named prefix operators like that.
Ruby's .method syntax is pretty nice, too, though:

    1.0.+(2.0)./(3.0).+4.0

=2E . . as long as you aren't working with floating point numbers, since
all those extra dots/decimals look *awful* strung together like that.

--=20
Chad Perrin [ content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
Quoth Martin Fowler: "Any fool can write code that a computer can
understand.  Good programmers write code that humans can understand."

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