In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Paul Rubin <http://[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Don't be silly. Some operators are more natural as infix and others
> as functions. It's just like in natural language. People have an
> innate ability to make such distinctions and it's fine for a
> programming language to use it.
I don't think you can really make this case. In English, German and
Spanish noun-verb order is flexible to accommodate differences in
mood, tense, and emphasis:
"Add 2 and 2." imperative.
"The sum of 2 and 2" noun phrase.
"2 was added to 2." passive voice.
Personally, I've always preferred use the imperative to describe
basic math rather than the passive. This would seem to map better to
RPN than infix.
And on top of that, some languages are even more flexible in regard
to word order, preferring to communicate relationships through the
modification of noun stems. In such a language, "He* her- the ring+
gave," is just as valid as "Her- the ring+ gave he*" and "He* gave
her- the ring+." ("+/-/*" signifying modifications which do not
exist in modern English.)
At any rate, I find this argument to be weak given that English
doesn't always use the same word order. And English is just one
language out of hundreds.
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