My view of ambiguities is less tolerant. Yes, English is a wonderful
language for expressing ambiguities, but it is not wonderful when you
are trying to avoid ambiguities. Legal writing & government regulations
are so ugly because that's the kind of English you are forced to use to
say exactly what you mean.
Is 3 'more than' $0? I don't know. But I think it's wrong to seek the
answer in the result of the execution of a sentence. I could appeal to
if. 3 > $0 do.
smoutput 'it's greater!'
end.
as answering the question 'formally'. But then,
if. -. 3 > $0 do.
smoutput 'it's not greater!'
end.
I would find that my definition of 'formal' needs work.
I don't think different expressions for the same computation represent
ambiguity. Ambiguity is multiple meanings for the same expression:
magical in poetry, abhorrent in technical writing, intolerable in a
computer language.
Henry Rich
On 10/6/2013 6:00 AM, Raul Miller wrote:
If we think of this in J terms, we might treat "more" as a verb such as
more=: >
Then your first sentence becomes a question about 3 > ,2 which has an
answer which matches ,1.
Your second sentence would involve more work to translate to J. I
could translate it as
(3 > $0) +. 3 > 4 1
... but this gives us a length error, and our distaste for errors
might drive us further afield, to find another translation for "or".
If we felt exploratory, we might try:
or=: ;
so another almost plausible translation could be
($0) ;&(3&>) $4 1
Put differently, english is a wonderful language for expressing
ambiguities and translation tends to freeze some of those ambiguities
in the resulting work.
With J we are also faced with ambiguities, but because it is an
executable notation we get another perspective on ambiguities of
expression, where different expressions might achieve the same end.
Thanks,
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