On 18.01.2011 01:24, spir wrote:
On 01/17/2011 07:57 PM, Daniel Gibson wrote:
IMHO * (multiply) is not good because in theoretical computer science
multiply is used to concatenate two words and thus concatenating a word
with itself n times is word^n (pow(word, n) in mathematical terms).
Weird. Excuse my ignorance, but how can multiply even mean concat? How
is this written concretely (example welcome)? Do theoretical computer
science people find this syntax a Good Thing?
Denis
It is that way for formal languages. {a,b}^2 = {aa,ab,ba,bb}, so only
used for sets of strings. It is logical there because * means
something like cartesian product which is a concatenation of all
combinations of both sets. The notation is not that logical for single
strings though.
Furthermore, + should mean addition, * should mean multiplication.
None of them should stand for concatenation. Similar argument led to
the introduction of the ~ operator in D (which is not present in C++/Java)
just my point of view,
Krox
