POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Programming langauges : Re: Programming langauges Server Time
5 Sep 2024 11:21:19 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Programming langauges  
From: clipka
Date: 26 Oct 2009 12:52:59
Message: <4ae5d3eb$1@news.povray.org>
Darren New schrieb:
> Invisible wrote:
>> As far as I know, even in languages that are usually written from 
>> right to left, the most significant digit is still written "first" and 
>> the least written "last".
> 
> I'm pretty sure that in arabic, where numbers come from, the LSB is 
> written first (i.e., arabic, right-to-left, writes digits in the same 
> order as we do).

Yup, apparently so. Quote from the 'Pedia:

"The numerals are arranged with their lowest value digit to the right, 
with higher value positions added to the left. This arrangement was 
adopted identically into the numerals as used in Europe. The Latin 
alphabet runs from left to right, unlike the Arabic alphabet. Hence, 
from the point of view of the reader, numerals in western texts are 
written with the highest power of the base first whereas numerals in 
Arabic texts are written with the lowest power of the base first"

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#Adoption_in_Europe)

So Arabs (who can claim to be closer to the invention of the whole 
positional smash) would probably consider the Intel format to be more 
intuitive.


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