Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!hwcs!zen!frank
From: frank@zen.co.uk (Frank Wales)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: life's one-way conversions
Message-ID: <2053@zen.co.uk>
Date: 2 Dec 89 15:02:14 GMT
References: <1989Nov15.171212.642@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> <109.UUL1.3#5131@mvac23.UUCP> <2591@helios.mmsac.UUCP> <7123@ficc.uu.net> <4440@celit.fps.com>
Reply-To: frank@zen.co.uk (Frank Wales)
Organization: Zengrange Limited, Leeds, England
Lines: 27

In article <7123@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>[ Algebraic to RPN is a one-way conversion ]
>
>Not for me. I have an HP calculator, but I'm ruined for RPN. After all that
>Forth programming a 4-element stack just doesn't do it. And eventually Forth
>doesn't do it either.
>
>Algebraic -> RPN -> Forth -> Infix. And we're back where we started from.

Well...some RPN machines from HP these days have unbounded stacks.  Besides,
the infix you end up with is more useable that the Algebraic calculator
behaviour you started with.  It's the visibility of the stack, as much
as the consistency of the postfix entry scheme, which makes RPN the better
system for *calculators*.  (And hey!  Isn't that what we're talking about
here?)

In article <4440@celit.fps.com> firth@fps.com (John Firth) writes:
>Testimonial:  I was a humble student ever losing important figures
>foolishly off the end of my HP-16 stack until the HP-41 came into my
>life.  Now I am a new man. I can have a huge stack (up to 32k, I
>suppose) encompassing real and complex numbers, matrices, vectors,
>etc.

Er, don't you mean HP-28S?  That's the only machine which fits that bill.
--
Frank Wales, Systems Manager,        [frank@zen.co.uk<->mcvax!zen.co.uk!frank]
Zengrange Ltd., Greenfield Rd., Leeds, ENGLAND, LS9 8DB. (+44) 532 489048 x217 


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