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From: milne@ics.uci.edu (Alastair Milne)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: TP: Exponentiation?
Message-ID: <26C3B78F.8576@ics.uci.edu>
Date: 11 Aug 90 07:45:19 GMT
References: <14030@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Organization: UC Irvine Department of ICS
Lines: 17


>In the new Extended Pascal standard (already approved by ANSI, IEEE, & BSR),
>the Pascal committee has added exponentiation to the language.  As a matter
>of fact, we added TWO operators.  We added "**" for raising things to
>real powers and "POW" for raising things to integer powers.

   Does the standard say anything about how they are implemented?
   I understand that Wirth decided to omit exponentiation from his
   original version of the language in part because implementations
   of the operator tended to be unsatisfactory.

   By the way, was anybody else taught that the number on top is 
   the "exponent", and that the whole thing, base and exponent together,
   is the "power"?  Confuses me sometimes.


   Alastair Milne