On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 04:38:51PM +0100, Steffen Mueller wrote: : Damian Conway wrote: : >Larry wrote: : > : >>On the other hand, I could see an argument that said anyone who : >>doesn't know what .arity means shouldn't be writing routines that : >>depend on it... : : >That was more or less my line of thought. : : Now, I think I'll dare claim my English is not exactly bad for a 21 : year-old non-native speaker. Being a physics and CS student, I do also : have mathematical background, but it still took me a few seconds to : figure out "arity" *in this context*. Maybe that's because I can't think : of an exact German equivalent either; maybe it's because I don't think a : function's arity is quite the same as it's *minimum* number of : parameters? I mean, it makes sense in a functional language... but you : don't have functions with a variable number of arguments there.
Sure, but one can imagine having functions with a given arity that can nonetheless be modified adverbially. In this view, required parameters contribute to "arity", but optional parameters are only used for, er, options. Larry
