Yehuda Katz cited an acronym taught when he was a wee lad learning
algebra: PEMDAS (Parentheses, Exponentiation, Multiplication/Dviistion,
Addition/Subtraction). Who else learned this?
There's nothing sacrosanct about binary precedence being generally lower
than unary. Consider the property access operators in JS. But the
precedent to which all cited languages bow is Math and that's what
programmers (mostly) study. I think you are making too much out of the
local -x ** y case in light of this global argument.
/be
Mark S. Miller wrote:
I don't get it. The conflict between
* the history of ** in other languages,
* the general pattern that unary binds tighter than binary
seems unresolvable. By the first bullet, -2 ** 2 would be -4. By the
second, it would be 4. Either answer will surprise too many
programmers. By contrast, no one is confused by either -Math.pow(2, 2)
or Math.pow(-2, 2).
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