Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote: > Neither of the natural candidates, a^b and a**b, are an option, as they > are, respectively, already taken and ambiguous.
I think that a ** b can be used, is not ambiguous except for the tokenizer of the language. It is the same difference you have with: a ++ b -> identifier 'a', unary operator '++', identifier 'b' (not parseable) a + + b -> identifier 'a', binary operator '+', unary operator '+', identifier 'b' (parseable) I don't know anyone who writes ** to mean multiplication and dereference, except when obfuscating code. People usually prefer adding a whitespace between both operators, for obvious readability purposes. I think it is perfectly reasonable to deprecate current usage of '**' for the next release, and a few releases later, make '**' a new operator. I doubt anyone would notice. Other examples: a-- - b a - --b a && b a & &b
