Roger Hui wrote: >> I've often thought * before +, which is now >> taught as 'standard', comes mostly from the >> first Fortran which did use that order. > > On this topic, Falkoff and Iverson had this to > say on page 326 of "The Design of APL". > http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/174/ibmrd1704F.pdf > > The rule that multiplication is executed before > addition and that the power function is executed > before multiplication has been long accepted in > mathematics.
The increasing formalization of this rule over time is described in http://members.aol.com/jeff570/operation.html (section headed "Order of Operations"). John ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
