Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!chx400!bernina!mfranz
From: mfranz@bernina.ethz.ch (Michael Franz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2
Subject: Re: Why no ** operator in Modula2?
Message-ID: <1991Jun11.160535.6842@bernina.ethz.ch>
Date: 11 Jun 91 16:05:35 GMT
References: <676362172.32@egsgate.FidoNet.Org>
Reply-To: mfranz@bernina.UUCP (Michael Franz)
Organization: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zuerich
Lines: 12

A guiding principle of Wirth's languages is to put into the language all
of those features that are usually found in processors and leave to
libraries all of those that are not.  Note that if you *desparately*
need the efficiency gained by having *inline*
floating-point-exponentiation, you might build a pseudo-module Math into
the compiler, similar to module SYSTEM.  I did that in an experimental
version of an Oberon compiler, but removed it again because in my case,
the efficiency gained was minimal while it forced me to maintain a
separate version of our compiler front-end.

Michael Franz
Computersysteme, ETH Zurich, Switzerland