On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 9:04 AM, <m...@justinbogner.com> wrote:
> John Goerzen <jgoer...@complete.org> writes: > > Wikipedia's first sentence about monoids is: > > > > In abstract algebra, a branch of mathematics, a monoid is an algebraic > > structure with a single, associative binary operation and an identity > > element. > > > > Which is *not* intuitive to someone that comes from a background in.... > > any other programming language. > > > > Instead of Wikipedia, why not try a dictionary? Looking up monoid using > dictionary.com: > > An operator * and a value x form a monoid if * is > associative and x is its left and right identity. > > On the other hand, appendable doesn't seem to be a word, and while you > can infer that it means "something that can be appended to", that's only > half of the story... > > > Monoid isn't something I came across and didn't understand, its something I should have been using for a long time before I discovered it. But it never jumped out at me when I was browsing the library documentation tree.
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