New Science Discovery: Perl Detracters Remain Idiots After A Decade!
Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)
spamtrap at library.lspace.org.invalid
Thu Mar 1 10:07:15 EST 2012
In <fgD3r.7862$_63.3414 at newsfe19.iad>, on 03/01/2012
at 04:52 AM, Chiron <chiron613 at gmail.com> said:
>Yes. That (the mathematically defined way) is a particular way, is
>it not?
No. There is no "the mathematically defined way".
>However, I wasn't specifically referring to infix/postfix/prefix or
>anything of that nature. I wasn't limiting my comment to lisp
>notation in particular, since what I said applies to any language.
No, it doesn't.
>I was referring to the placement of parentheses (or other
>groupings) to indicate to *humans* what the intended sequence
>of events was.
Operator precedence has the same purpose, and was around long before
computers. Quite often expressions exploiting operator precedence are
easier *for humans* to read than expressions involving deeply nested
parentheses.
>Mathematically,
Your exposure to Mathematics is too limited.
>and in any language with which I am familiar,
Your exposure to computer languages is too limited.
>the sequence: 2 + 6 / 3 will yield 4.
Try it in APL.
>Whenever there is *any* possibility of ambiguity, I see no reason
>not to clarify.
Even if doing so makes it harder to read? Since you keep referring to
Mathematics, I will point out that it is rare in Mathematics for
anybody to publish a complete proof. Minor steps are almost always
omitted to make for easier reading, and ambiguous shortcuts are used
in the expectation that the reader will understand what is meant.
>Back in the days when the way you wrote your code affected how it
>was compiled,
That would be the present.
>it made sense to rely heavily on language-specific
>features, thus saving a few bytes.
Those optimizations involved adding extraneous parentheses, not
omitting redundant parentheses.
>A few extra variables, if they help clarity, aren't going to hurt
>anything.
And if they harm clarity?
>Let the machine do the grunt work.
That's exactly what languages with operator precedence do.
>Pamper your readers (which in a few weeks or months might be you)
>and show exactly what you had in mind.
The two goals conflict.
>That's all I'm saying.
No; you're saying to use redundant parentheses, which conflicts with
other things you're saying.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>
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