Re: [q-lang-users] New stuff in cvs: multichar ops, views

[Eddie R. <ed...@bm...>]

Albert Graef,

> John Cowan wrote:
>> I always forget that -2 is the application of minus to 2 rather than a
>> constant, so I write things like "foo -2", which then turns out to be
>> "(foo -) 2".
>
> Well, syntactically the '-' in '-2' is a unary minus, although
> semantically, it's still a number and not an explicit application of
> minus. IMHO, that's the only reasonable way to implement it, since I
> want '-2' and '-X' to be parsed in the same manner.

Put this on a college Algebra or Calculus test:
-2^2 =
(a) -4 (b) 4
All most all of the students will put (b). This is the same gotcha that I
have to point out to students all the time. Strange though, they have no
problem with X=2, -X^2=-4.

Sorry, I just had to toss in my 2 cents.

Eddie