For Chinese it is "obvious". "Word" means "character" and a phrase is a sequence of words. A number is specified as a phrase with words for the digits in the positional decimal system, so repeated application of [EMAIL PROTECTED] eventually gets you down (or up) to 3, and # of its UTF-8 representation is 3.
----- Original Message ----- From: John Randall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sunday, May 11, 2008 6:37 Subject: [Jchat] Iterated words and numbers To: [email protected] > Another problem from HAKMEM. > > Suppose we start with a number, write it out in words, take the > length, and keep going. For English, the result will > always converge > to 4 (and, as far as I can tell, to 3 for Chinese). > > Using us and zh from > > http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Number_in_Words > > ~. [EMAIL PROTECTED]:_"0 ] 1e3 ?. 1e4 > 4 > ~. [EMAIL PROTECTED]:_"0 ] 1e3 ?. 1e4 > 3 > > Why? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
