On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 02:55:42PM +1000, Rob Studdert wrote: > On 9 April 2013 14:37, Tom Cakalic <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi Rob, (and John) > > > > You and I often see things in the same way. > > > > However the question/problem seems rather academic. > > > > I haven't needed to or tried to remember the order of operations much > > past high school. > > > > At 52 years old, I see the implicit wisdom in using parentheses to > > denote the proper order. Why leave the correct solution to chance when > > one could explicitly specify it? Is it really too hard to do so? > > Especially if one desires the correct result? > > If that's your preference then you are free to do it that way, but if > someone doesn't add brackets and you have to deal with their output > then it's advantageous to know how to deal with the situation, when > the rules are followed there is no ambiguity.
I look on them as not so much rules as guidelines. I've needed to know these just about every day since I first learned them, but that's because for the last 40+ years I've earned my living writing software, and most (but not all) of the common languages used to program computers follow the same operator precedence conventions (at least as far as the simple arithmetic operators are concerned). Mind you, I've also used those HP calculators that use RPN . . . -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
