Silly newbie question - Carrot character (^)

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Seebs <usenet-nospam at seebs.net> writes:

> On 2010-11-06, Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic at xemacs.org> wrote:
>> I don't speak for "Nobody", but to me a reference manual would be a
>> document intended for the user of the language.  The thing for the
>> language lawyer is something intended for the implementor, or possibly
>> for the very advanced user who argues with the implementor about
>> intricacies of behavior.  The latter document is also known as the
>> "specification" or the "standard".
>
> I guess I would think that if such a document cannot be used as a
> reference, it's not very well done.

It's not a matter of quality, but of intended audience.  To most
ordinary programmers the standards documents such as the C standard, the
C++ standard, or the Python reference are quite dense and hard to use as
a reference, and yet they are considered quite well done.