Miles wrote:
Don wrote:
You didn't respond to my assertion: even if you _could_ do it, why would
you want to? ** sucks as an exponential operator. I dispute the
contention that ** is a natural choice. It comes from the same language
that brought you IF X .NE. 2
There are too many languages that support ** as an exponentiation
operator, that is the reason ** is a likely candidate. Your reasoning
seemed to be:
- Fortran is bad;
- Fortran had ** as its exponentiation operator;
- So, ** is bad as an exponentiation operator.
Not at all! I'm attacking the fallacy that "** must be a good choice
because so many languages use it".
* The ONLY reason other languages use ** is because Fortran used it.
* Fortran used ** because it had no choice, not because it was believed
to be good.
* We have choices that Fortran did not have. The best choice for Fortran
is not necessarily the best choice for D.
Note that there are no C-family languages which use ** for
exponentiation, so there isn't really a precedent.
However, the syntax is really not the issue. The issue is, is there
sufficient need for a power operator (of any syntax)?
I don't care for ** or .NE., really. I don't like * as a multiplication
operator, in fact. I'd rather have × as multiplication, ↑ as
exponentiation, ∧ as logical and, ∨ as logical or, ¬ as a logical not, =
as equality, ≠ as inequality and ← as assignment.
I don't know why, but every time I say this, it brings all sorts of
controversies and euphoric reactions.
Lack of keyboards.
