"Marc-Hendrik Bremer" <Mar### [at] t-onlinede> wrote in message
news:3a7feea6$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Scott Hill schrieb in Nachricht <3a7fe7cb@news.povray.org>...
> >Without brackets it is ambiguous, to a
> >degree - we may default to assuming that we're meant to follow the
standard
> >operator order rules but we don't and can't know that that assumption is
> >correct.
>
>
> Well, it is even ambiguous with brackets. Cause if you don't fallow the
> standard rules, you could give the brackets a totally different meaning.
> That's what makes all communication that faulty - we assume, that we
follow
> the same rules, but most of the time we don't. As a wise man said ones -
it
> is more of an wonder that communication does happens most of the time in a
> correct way than the opposite.
>

    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 -
the problem is not that we're misinterpret anything, but, rather that there
isn't enough information in the original form - we need the precedence rules
to remove the ambiguity but they do not redefine or even clarify the meaning
of any of the symbols ('+' stills means 'plus', '-' still means 'minus' and
'*' still means 'times'). Likewise, adding brackets does not change the
meanings of any of the symbols, they just clarify how those symbols are
intended to interact.

Does that make any sense ?

Scott.

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