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From: john@ghostwheel.unm.edu (John Prentice)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C for numerical work - expression notation
Message-ID: <1990Dec11.160607.15827@ariel.unm.edu>
Date: 11 Dec 90 16:06:07 GMT
References: <16798@csli.Stanford.EDU> <8339@lanl.gov> <1990Dec11.051448.10742@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu>
Sender: John K. Prentice
Organization: University of New Mexico Math Dept., Albuquerque, NM
Lines: 17

In article <1990Dec11.051448.10742@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Ivan Derzhanski) writes:

<< reply to Jim Giles concerning the fidelity of mathematical notation in
   Fortran and c largely deleted ..
>
>No, since both languages are hopelessly far from standard notation.
>You know how introductory books go: "Thou shalt not write `(-1)**K'
>as thou dost in maths" etc. etc.
>
>

I think it is fairly obvious that neither fortran nor C maintain any
great fidelity to mathematical notation beyond a very simple one.  I also
don't know that the people who wrote these languages ever suggested
more than that.

John Prentice