[crossed over to r-help since its not a bug and not a devel thing any more]
Thomas Lumley wrote:
> So is -2^2. The precedence of ^ is higher than that of unary minus. It
> may be surprising, but it *is* documented and has been in S for a long
> time.
And just about every other programming language:
Matlab:
>> -2^2
ans =
-4
Maxima:
(C1) -2^2;
(D1) - 4
Fortran:
print *,-2**2
-4
Perl:
$ perl -e 'print -2^2'
4294967292
Oops. I mean:
$ perl -e 'print -2**2'
-4
The precendence of operators is remarkably consistent over programming
languages over time. It seems natural for me now that ^ is done before
unary minus, but I don't know if that's because I've been doing that for
25 years or because its really more natural.
Anyone got a counter example where unary minus is higher than power?
Barry
______________________________________________
[email protected] mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
