Ambrus from Budapest is right, of course. To put his argument in more tangible terms, when you were in secondary school, Jack, what did you do with "sin cos y"?
Didn't you _read_ it from left to right and _execute_ it from right to left? Ken observed the many conventions used in maths, often in contradiction with one another, and _selected_ (not invented) one that was fruitful and could be universal and he made it universal. ~ Gilles ---------- Original Message ----------- From: "Devon McCormick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Chat forum" <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 10:23:24 -0400 Subject: Re: [Jchat] right to/of left -- what about left to right? > I'm sure that, by "one file" below, Ambrus is using "file" in the chess > sense of "rank and file" but to avoid confusion with the other > common uses of "file", we might want to say "one column". Other > than this tiny quibble, what he says is spot on. I see now that I > had mis-understood the original question as the one I'm used to > seeing but, since others have provided such good answers, I'll > refrain from further prolonging this discussioni. > > On 6/28/08, Zsbán Ambrus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 3:58 PM, Jack Andrews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > i was pondering the benefits pros and cons of a left to right > > > notation. > > > > One of the benefits is that they go well with writing monadic verbs as > > prefixes, not suffixes. APL notation, however revolutionary it was, > > is still influenced by common maths notation, which is why monadic > > functions are written on the left, and why the (-) and (%) expect > > arguments the order they do now. Another benefit is that we line > > expressions up to the left, so the important part of the expression is > > in one file. This way, you can usually easily find where a certain > > name is assigned to, because that statement often has the name on the > > left margin. > > > > > > > common calculators go left to right - 1 + 2 * 3 is 9. is > > > the fact that common calculators operate this way due to "common > > > sense" or an innate intuitiveness? > > > > > > That's a completely irrelevant issue here. You are referring to old > > calculators which had to have very little memory so they can evaluate > > such an expression incrementally as you type them only if the syntax > > is associative that way. > > > > > > Ambrus > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > > -- > Devon McCormick, CFA > ^me^ at acm. > org is my > preferred e-mail ------- End of Original Message ------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
