Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!yale!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C for numerical work - expression notation
Message-ID: <12407:Dec1020:53:5590@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 10 Dec 90 20:53:55 GMT
References: <1990Dec10.023332.15164@ariel.unm.edu> <4390:Dec1003:50:4790@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1990Dec10.071457.21537@ariel.unm.edu>
Organization: IR
Lines: 24

In article <1990Dec10.071457.21537@ariel.unm.edu> john@ghostwheel.unm.edu (John Prentice) writes:
>                                 y
>                                x
  [ ... ]
> All I was saying was that infix
> notation is what mathematicians use for exponentiation

No. Superscript notation is not infix notation. It's not even close.
Jim implied that Fortran is closer to ``standard mathematical notation''
than C is. I don't believe him. x**y and pow(x,y) are both quite far
from superscript notation. And x.gt.y is certainly not standard.

> I have NEVER heard a room full of Fortran 
> programmers complain about it however because it uses < instead of
> .lt. (which is what you said).

Well, I have.

Wasn't there a study showing that command names could be ridiculously
illogical and people would learn them just as quickly? I really do think
familiar notations are more important than ``standard mathematical
notation.''

---Dan