Fully realising that this discussion has been settled and the convention is here to stay, I nevertheless feel obsessed to make the remark that there would have been more elegant solutions. Other languages have been able to come up with acceptable operators for a binary 'min' or 'max': https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-2.95.2/gcc_5.html#SEC107 (less elegant alternative since the difference between min and max is confusing: http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/imlug/59656/HTML/default/viewer.htm#langref_sect10.htm )
The linguistic difference between max and maximum is very subtle, maybe because I am not a native English speaker. From the mathematical point of view, I think of a maximum (but preferably abbreviated as max) always in the context of a function or a set, never in the context of the largest out of two numbers (not really a reference or definition, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxima_and_minima only/directly discusses functions and sets). >? compares to max as + compares to sum would have been so much more convincing :-). That's all, enough bikeshedding for now, back to work. Op maandag 5 mei 2014 17:46:05 UTC+2 schreef Stefan Karpinski: > > I think at this point, while the maximum name may not be everyone's > favorite choice, that bikeshed has sailed. Unless we're going to solve this > problem differently, it's going to stay the way it is: max is to maximum as > + is to sum. > > > On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 11:39 AM, Ethan Anderes <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > >> +1 for max() and pmax(). It seems the easiest to write and to interpret. >> > >
