I'm still finding this anomalous behaviour quite a problem, and have more info for you to forward upstream.
It's easy to understand why the current behaviour of '/' is as it is -- you want to be able to say 100 kpc / 1 Gyr to get a velocity of 97.781311 km/sec Note there is no '*' in there. That's how we scientists sometimes write things on paper. The reader will grok meaning from context. But we will write (50km)^2*1000 watts/m^2*0.1 and damn well want that efficiency factor of 0.1 to be multiplying! I think yes, keep the current precedence for implicit multiplication[1], where no '*' has been written. But give '*' it's proper mathematical precedence with respect to '/' -- ie, the same. It's a heuristic. It's horrible. But I think this is the most natural. Perphaps a warning should be printed out in common erronous circumstances: eg, the m/s * s/day and 1/2 meter examples given in the manpage in my original report. Hey, while I'm here, any chance of getting "**" to be interpreted the same as "^" -- an exponent? :) [1] Hmm, I'm not really sure I'd even be happy with that -- eg when I write "1/2 meter" as above, to a human and to the author of such a calculation fragment, we quite clearly mean half a metre. It's a hard problem. But I believe if the user really wants the computer to be smart with regards to my first example "100 kpc / 1 Gyr", then they should explitly have to turn on the switch to units "--riskySlashPrecedenceYesIReallyKnowWhatIAmDoing" otherwise, use explicit brackets. -- TimC -- http://http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/staff/tconnors/ >Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function. You're saying cats are the opposite of bijectiveness? -- ST in RHOD -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
