On 2022-09-25, Emanuel Berg <in...@dataswamp.org> wrote: > The Wanderer wrote: > >> If the nature of operation O is such that objects B and >> C are guaranteed to always be identical, no matter what >> object A was, then operation O is categorized as >> being idempotent. > > It has to do with the number of times it is applied, > > abs(x) = abs(abs(x)) = abs..(abs(abs(x)))
That's the example given on the Wikipedia page on the subject, I think. It has the merit of being comprehensible even to me. > The same! > > This is the math definition, my use case of the word was > applied programming so it cannot be _exactly_ like that. One "programming" example given on that same Wikipedia page was that if you applied an update operation to Lutz Mueller's email address in a database (*ich habe Kopfschmerzen*!) that same update applied a second or third time (ad infinitum) would produce identical results. > Well, maybe in Haskell it can ...