In <fgD3r.7862$_63.3...@newsfe19.iad>, on 03/01/2012 at 04:52 AM, Chiron <chiron...@gmail.com> said:
>Yes. That (the mathematically defined way) is a particular way, is >it not? No. There is no "the mathematically defined way". >However, I wasn't specifically referring to infix/postfix/prefix or >anything of that nature. I wasn't limiting my comment to lisp >notation in particular, since what I said applies to any language. No, it doesn't. >I was referring to the placement of parentheses (or other >groupings) to indicate to *humans* what the intended sequence >of events was. Operator precedence has the same purpose, and was around long before computers. Quite often expressions exploiting operator precedence are easier *for humans* to read than expressions involving deeply nested parentheses. >Mathematically, Your exposure to Mathematics is too limited. >and in any language with which I am familiar, Your exposure to computer languages is too limited. >the sequence: 2 + 6 / 3 will yield 4. Try it in APL. >Whenever there is *any* possibility of ambiguity, I see no reason >not to clarify. Even if doing so makes it harder to read? Since you keep referring to Mathematics, I will point out that it is rare in Mathematics for anybody to publish a complete proof. Minor steps are almost always omitted to make for easier reading, and ambiguous shortcuts are used in the expectation that the reader will understand what is meant. >Back in the days when the way you wrote your code affected how it >was compiled, That would be the present. >it made sense to rely heavily on language-specific >features, thus saving a few bytes. Those optimizations involved adding extraneous parentheses, not omitting redundant parentheses. >A few extra variables, if they help clarity, aren't going to hurt >anything. And if they harm clarity? >Let the machine do the grunt work. That's exactly what languages with operator precedence do. >Pamper your readers (which in a few weeks or months might be you) >and show exactly what you had in mind. The two goals conflict. >That's all I'm saying. No; you're saying to use redundant parentheses, which conflicts with other things you're saying. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel> Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not reply to spamt...@library.lspace.org -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
