"Scott Hill" <sco### [at] ncgraphicsnet> wrote in message
news:3a804217@news.povray.org...

<snip>

>     Hmm, yes, but not in the same way - you may as well say that it's
> ambiguous because we _could_ interpret the numerical digits differently -

<snip>

Exactly - the sentence "the man went into the farmer's toilet and took his
trousers down" is ambiguous because we don't know whether the man takes his
own or the farmer's trousers down. It is also ambiguous because "trousers"
could mean "dictation". However, one is an ambiguity within the rules of
English, whereas the latter is only ambiguous if we ignore the rules of
English. We resolve the first by using common sense - we would generally
assume that the man takes his own trousers down (unless the book has been
purchased in a specialist shop and is being read one-handed).

Unfortunately, there is no common sense that can resolve "3+2*5". There is
nothing to imply that the multiplication occurs first. It would not be
illogical to write a parser that evaluated the addition first - it doesn't
break a rule, so much as a convention designed to resolve the inherant
ambiguity. However, to write a parser that ignored brackets or treated them
as some other operator would be an act of blatent idiocy.

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