At 09:33 -0800 2/28/06, Jonathan Lang wrote: >Technically, the result set is one element (the principle value), >since a mathematical function - by definition - produces a single >result for any given input.
Please be careful of "definitions" like that. Computer science has quite different ideas about mathematics than those of chalkboard algebra. x^(1/2) is a multivalued function and x^2 is a single valued function but they are both pow(x ,y). The likes of yacc have other ideas causing -2^2 to become +4 (thankfully not in perl) and sqrt(x) to become single valued positive definite. -2^(1/2) is not the same as -sqrt(2) in some implementations. Worse, the kB sometimes means 1024 bytes because computer science chose not to use a century old definition but that's OT. Perhaps "The perl definition of function is a subroutine that returns a single result which is the same type as the arguments" or something more precise that wouldn't rule out int( ) as a function. Perhaps "returns a single value appropriate for the context at invocation". -- Applescript syntax is like English spelling: Roughly, but not thoroughly, thought through.
