From: Giuseppe Bilotta <bilotta78@...>
Date: 2002-09-11T01:14:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Larry Wall's comments on Ruby

nico wrote:
> On September 10, 2002 04:38 am, Gavin Sinclair wrote:
> 
> > I'm not convinced that it's unnatural.  We don't know the types of a and
> > b, and for some objects a and b, a + b != b + a.
> >
> > I'm interested what you think the alternative is, or an argument against
> > the above, and how you would like to see a + b defined in Ruby.
> >
> > Gavin
> 
> I find that highly unnatural because we've been learning since grade school 
> that a + b = b + a.
> 
> If the objects don't satisfy that property they should be using a different 
> symbol.

No way. For example, product is commutative only up to complex 
numbers. If you move on to quaternions, you get a noncommutative 
product. And as for noncommutative sum ... think for example about 
strings. "a" + "b" != "b" + "a"

-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta

"E la storia dell'umanit�, babbo?"
"Ma niente: prima si fanno delle cazzate,
 poi si studia che cazzate si sono fatte"
(Altan)
("And what about the history of the human race, dad?"
 "Oh, nothing special: first they make some foolish things,
  then you study which foolish things have been made")