digitalmars.D - Unicode operators
- Moritz Warning (5/5) Oct 22 2008 Unicode operators would be nice addition to D.
- Thomas Moran (20/20) Oct 22 2008 I usually lurk here but I wanted to weigh in and say I think this would
- Jarrett Billingsley (13/13) Oct 22 2008 T24gV2VkLCBPY3QgMjIsIDIwMDggYXQgOTowMSBQTSwgVGhvbWFzIE1vcmFuIDxub0BzcGFt...
- Walter Bright (2/10) Oct 23 2008 It already is handled properly in D. Try it out!
- Bruno Medeiros (9/14) Oct 24 2008 Given the fact that most languages popular with mathematicians and
- Bill Baxter (24/29) Oct 22 2008 Some random thoughts:
- Paul D. Anderson (4/41) Oct 22 2008 The cross product, according to Wikipedia anyway, is also defined for 7-...
- Walter Bright (3/7) Oct 23 2008 That goes against a design principle of D, that it must be parsable
- Bent Rasmussen (12/17) Oct 26 2008 Agreed.
- Bill Baxter (7/17) Oct 26 2008 I don't know about you, but to me 'and' and 'or' make for much more
- Andrei Alexandrescu (5/27) Oct 26 2008 Hm, in my experimental emacs shenanigans I had && displayed as a wedge
- Bill Baxter (5/23) Oct 26 2008 Hmm. I guess it's just because I've spent a lot more time looking at
- Bent Rasmussen (6/34) Oct 26 2008 Not quite
- KennyTM~ (3/50) Oct 26 2008 I thought |> is a ket vector in quantum mechanics.
- Robert Fraser (3/8) Oct 26 2008 So what's the difference? That is to say, what would tolower(trim(str))
- Bent Rasmussen (11/13) Oct 27 2008 It would translate to something like
- Andrei Alexandrescu (6/22) Oct 27 2008 BTW, incidentally std.functional defines both operators in prefix form:
- Robert Fraser (6/12) Oct 26 2008 I'm sure it has to do with what you're used to looking at. I forget
- Ary Borenszweig (5/18) Oct 27 2008 You can remember those symbols by remembering that U is Union, and
- Bent Rasmussen (13/33) Oct 26 2008 This is a matter of taste and habbit, but my preference is
Unicode operators would be nice addition to D. Since it's common to have opFooBar style operators overloads in D, I would like to rise the question what unicode operators do users need (most) or would like to have? opDotProduct and opCrossProduct would be definitely cool.
Oct 22 2008
I usually lurk here but I wanted to weigh in and say I think this would be a great thing. It's depressing to see people worrying about whether "." or "!" is more appropriate for a particular operator when the real problem is that a different symbol is required. Mathematicians have no qualms about using 5 different alphabets and 10 kinds of brackets to describe things, and there's no fundamental reason computer programs should be any different, except for the fact that entering the symbols is awkward. Hopefully that will change. I know there's been at least one font in Windows since win2k that has glyphs for the whole Basic Multilingual Plane, and there are a lot more that support at least the greek alphabet and some extended punctuation. I'm sure the situation is similar in Linux. Since C++ permits unicode identifiers I actually did some experiments a few months ago to see what the compiler support was like. The conclusion was that only MSVC9 can deal with them, GCC4 and ICC10 (EDG I suppose) both choked. You can actually call a variable "αβγ" in VC9 and the program compiles. There's unfortunately some confusion over whether UTF-8 encoded files should have a BOM - MSVC doesn't parse them properly if they don't, but GCC chokes on the BOM. I think this would have to be either specified or handled flexibly in D front ends.
Oct 22 2008
"Jarrett Billingsley" <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> T24gV2VkLCBPY3QgMjIsIDIwMDggYXQgOTowMSBQTSwgVGhvbWFzIE1vcmFuIDxub0BzcGFtLnBs eD4gd3JvdGU6Cj4gU2luY2UgQysrIHBlcm1pdHMgdW5pY29kZSBpZGVudGlmaWVycyBJIGFjdHVh bGx5IGRpZCBzb21lIGV4cGVyaW1lbnRzIGEgZmV3Cj4gbW9udGhzIGFnbyB0byBzZWUgd2hhdCB0 aGUgY29tcGlsZXIgc3VwcG9ydCB3YXMgbGlrZS4gVGhlIGNvbmNsdXNpb24gd2FzCj4gdGhhdCBv bmx5IE1TVkM5IGNhbiBkZWFsIHdpdGggdGhlbSwgR0NDNCBhbmQgSUNDMTAgKEVERyBJIHN1cHBv c2UpIGJvdGgKPiBjaG9rZWQuIFlvdSBjYW4gYWN0dWFsbHkgY2FsbCBhIHZhcmlhYmxlICLh4uMi IGluIFZDOSBhbmQgdGhlIHByb2dyYW0KPiBjb21waWxlcy4gVGhlcmUncyB1bmZvcnR1bmF0ZWx5 IHNvbWUgY29uZnVzaW9uIG92ZXIgd2hldGhlciBVVEYtOCBlbmNvZGVkCj4gZmlsZXMgc2hvdWxk IGhhdmUgYSBCT00gLSBNU1ZDIGRvZXNuJ3QgcGFyc2UgdGhlbSBwcm9wZXJseSBpZiB0aGV5IGRv bid0LAo+IGJ1dCBHQ0MgY2hva2VzIG9uIHRoZSBCT00uIEkgdGhpbmsgdGhpcyB3b3VsZCBoYXZl IHRvIGJlIGVpdGhlciBzcGVjaWZpZWQgb3IKPiBoYW5kbGVkIGZsZXhpYmx5IGluIEQgZnJvbnQg ZW5kcy4KClRoZSBEIHNwZWMgYWxyZWFkeSBkZWZpbmVzIGNvbXBpbGVyIGJlaGF2aW9yIGluIHJl c3BlY3QgdG8gQk9NcyBvciB0aGUKbGFjayB0aGVyZW9mLgo=
Oct 22 2008
Thomas Moran wrote:Since C++ permits unicode identifiers I actually did some experiments a few months ago to see what the compiler support was like. The conclusion was that only MSVC9 can deal with them, GCC4 and ICC10 (EDG I suppose) both choked. You can actually call a variable "αβγ" in VC9 and the program compiles. There's unfortunately some confusion over whether UTF-8 encoded files should have a BOM - MSVC doesn't parse them properly if they don't, but GCC chokes on the BOM. I think this would have to be either specified or handled flexibly in D front ends.It already is handled properly in D. Try it out!
Oct 23 2008
Thomas Moran wrote:Mathematicians have no qualms about using 5 different alphabets and 10 kinds of brackets to describe things, and there's no fundamental reason computer programs should be any different, except for the fact that entering the symbols is awkward.Given the fact that most languages popular with mathematicians and physicists (Fortran, Matlab, APL) are little, if not scarcely, popular among the general software programming crowd, I would say having mathematicians ideas be the lead for language design is a bad ideia. Software engineering is much more than that. -- Bruno Medeiros - Software Developer, MSc. in CS/E graduate http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D
Oct 24 2008
Some random thoughts: I agree it would be cool to be able to write a =D7 b and get a cross produ= ct. But it would be uncool if every Unicode operator meant adding new special opFoo and opFooAssign methods. So this is connected to the operator overloading overhaul. Also cross product is rather specialized. In all of math the cross product operator only has meaning for 2-d and 3-d vectors as far as I know. The dot is used a little more widely. The ability to define new infix operators would be generally useful quite apart from discussions of Unicode. If I could say A dot B and A cross B instead of dot(A,B) that would already be quite cool. Uh oh, here comes Downs! [ducks] The classic problem with new infix operators is defining precedence. Without precedence you can't decide what A op1 B op2 C is supposed to equal. I think it was Ocaml or something allows you to declare new infix operators with precedence based on other operators. So with that you can kind of create a "subclass" of the multiply operator, that has similar precedence. That seems elegant to me. --bb On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 8:57 AM, Moritz Warning <moritzwarning web.de> wrot= e:Unicode operators would be nice addition to D. Since it's common to have opFooBar style operators overloads in D, I would like to rise the question what unicode operators do users need (most) or would like to have? opDotProduct and opCrossProduct would be definitely cool.
Oct 22 2008
Bill Baxter Wrote:Some random thoughts: I agree it would be cool to be able to write a × b and get a cross product. But it would be uncool if every Unicode operator meant adding new special opFoo and opFooAssign methods. So this is connected to the operator overloading overhaul. Also cross product is rather specialized. In all of math the cross product operator only has meaning for 2-d and 3-d vectors as far as I know. The dot is used a little more widely. The ability to define new infix operators would be generally useful quite apart from discussions of Unicode. If I could say A dot B and A cross B instead of dot(A,B) that would already be quite cool. Uh oh, here comes Downs! [ducks] The classic problem with new infix operators is defining precedence. Without precedence you can't decide what A op1 B op2 C is supposed to equal. I think it was Ocaml or something allows you to declare new infix operators with precedence based on other operators. So with that you can kind of create a "subclass" of the multiply operator, that has similar precedence. That seems elegant to me. --bb On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 8:57 AM, Moritz Warning <moritzwarning web.de> wrote:The cross product, according to Wikipedia anyway, is also defined for 7-d vectors. (I did not know that. I'm not sure I know it now.) But the cross product generalizes to an 'exterior' or 'wedge' product, defined in spaces of any dimension. However it no longer uses an 'x' symbol but replaces it with a wedge-shaped symbol (looks like a Greek lambda). This is a useful symbol, in its place, but I can't imagine it being useful in computing applications short of the Mathematica level. PaulUnicode operators would be nice addition to D. Since it's common to have opFooBar style operators overloads in D, I would like to rise the question what unicode operators do users need (most) or would like to have? opDotProduct and opCrossProduct would be definitely cool.
Oct 22 2008
Bill Baxter wrote:I think it was Ocaml or something allows you to declare new infix operators with precedence based on other operators. So with that you can kind of create a "subclass" of the multiply operator, that has similar precedence. That seems elegant to me.That goes against a design principle of D, that it must be parsable without semantic analysis.
Oct 23 2008
Agreed. As an example: what domain does not include boolean expressions? And how many domains include vector and matrix operations? Quite many. It would be a massive boost for readability in those domains (and in all domains, with boolean expressions). The problem is not the operators themselves; a language does not loose anything by extension, it is how exactly to best arrive at the goal of having the code look nice and readable with those operators. - Bent Hm, anyone fancy the |> operator? "Moritz Warning" <moritzwarning web.de> skrev i meddelelsen news:gdoekc$1f5o$4 digitalmars.com...Unicode operators would be nice addition to D. Since it's common to have opFooBar style operators overloads in D, I would like to rise the question what unicode operators do users need (most) or would like to have? opDotProduct and opCrossProduct would be definitely cool.
Oct 26 2008
On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 10:16 AM, Bent Rasmussen <IncredibleShrinkingSphere gmail.com> wrote:Agreed. As an example: what domain does not include boolean expressions? And how many domains include vector and matrix operations? Quite many.It would be a massive boost for readability in those domains (and in all domains, with boolean expressions).I don't know about you, but to me 'and' and 'or' make for much more readable boolean expressions than the standard mathematical symbols ^ and v. Heck, && and || are more readable to me than the math symbols.The problem is not the operators themselves; a language does not loose anything by extension, it is how exactly to best arrive at the goal of having the code look nice and readable with those operators. - Bent Hm, anyone fancy the |> operator?What would that mean? --bb
Oct 26 2008
Bill Baxter wrote:On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 10:16 AM, Bent Rasmussen <IncredibleShrinkingSphere gmail.com> wrote:Hm, in my experimental emacs shenanigans I had && displayed as a wedge and || displayed as a vee and heck do they look good.Agreed. As an example: what domain does not include boolean expressions? And how many domains include vector and matrix operations? Quite many.It would be a massive boost for readability in those domains (and in all domains, with boolean expressions).I don't know about you, but to me 'and' and 'or' make for much more readable boolean expressions than the standard mathematical symbols ^ and v. Heck, && and || are more readable to me than the math symbols.Ironic smile with eyes closed. AndreiThe problem is not the operators themselves; a language does not loose anything by extension, it is how exactly to best arrive at the goal of having the code look nice and readable with those operators. - Bent Hm, anyone fancy the |> operator?What would that mean?
Oct 26 2008
On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 11:46 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:Bill Baxter wrote:Hmm. I guess it's just because I've spent a lot more time looking at the C operators than the math ones. --bbOn Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 10:16 AM, Bent Rasmussen <IncredibleShrinkingSphere gmail.com> wrote:Hm, in my experimental emacs shenanigans I had && displayed as a wedge and || displayed as a vee and heck do they look good.Agreed. As an example: what domain does not include boolean expressions? And how many domains include vector and matrix operations? Quite many.It would be a massive boost for readability in those domains (and in all domains, with boolean expressions).I don't know about you, but to me 'and' and 'or' make for much more readable boolean expressions than the standard mathematical symbols ^ and v. Heck, && and || are more readable to me than the math symbols.
Oct 26 2008
Not quite http://blogs.msdn.com/dsyme/archive/2008/09/01/the-f-operators-and-basic-functions.aspx |> is pipelining- Bent "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> skrev i meddelelsen news:ge3a2o$2i0k$2 digitalmars.com...is function compositionBill Baxter wrote:On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 10:16 AM, Bent Rasmussen <IncredibleShrinkingSphere gmail.com> wrote:Hm, in my experimental emacs shenanigans I had && displayed as a wedge and || displayed as a vee and heck do they look good.Agreed. As an example: what domain does not include boolean expressions? And how many domains include vector and matrix operations? Quite many.It would be a massive boost for readability in those domains (and in all domains, with boolean expressions).I don't know about you, but to me 'and' and 'or' make for much more readable boolean expressions than the standard mathematical symbols ^ and v. Heck, && and || are more readable to me than the math symbols.Ironic smile with eyes closed. AndreiThe problem is not the operators themselves; a language does not loose anything by extension, it is how exactly to best arrive at the goal of having the code look nice and readable with those operators. - Bent Hm, anyone fancy the |> operator?What would that mean?
Oct 26 2008
Bent Rasmussen wrote:Not quite http://blogs.msdn.com/dsyme/archive/2008/09/01/the-f-operators-and- asic-functions.aspx |> is pipeliningI thought |> is a ket vector in quantum mechanics. <ϕ|A|ψ> := ∫ ϕ(x)* A ψ(x) dx- Bent "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> skrev i meddelelsen news:ge3a2o$2i0k$2 digitalmars.com...is function compositionBill Baxter wrote:On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 10:16 AM, Bent Rasmussen <IncredibleShrinkingSphere gmail.com> wrote:Hm, in my experimental emacs shenanigans I had && displayed as a wedge and || displayed as a vee and heck do they look good.Agreed. As an example: what domain does not include boolean expressions? And how many domains include vector and matrix operations? Quite many.It would be a massive boost for readability in those domains (and in all domains, with boolean expressions).I don't know about you, but to me 'and' and 'or' make for much more readable boolean expressions than the standard mathematical symbols ^ and v. Heck, && and || are more readable to me than the math symbols.Ironic smile with eyes closed. AndreiThe problem is not the operators themselves; a language does not loose anything by extension, it is how exactly to best arrive at the goal of having the code look nice and readable with those operators. - Bent Hm, anyone fancy the |> operator?What would that mean?
Oct 26 2008
Bent Rasmussen wrote:http://blogs.msdn.com/dsyme/archive/2008/09/01/the-f-operators-and- asic-functions.aspx |> is pipeliningSo what's the difference? That is to say, what would tolower(trim(str)) translate to?is function composition
Oct 26 2008
"Robert Fraser" <fraserofthenight gmail.com> skrev i meddelelsen news:ge3mit$i33$1 digitalmars.com...So what's the difference? That is to say, what would tolower(trim(str)) translate to?It would translate to something like val x = str |> trim |> tolower; So it looks like a pipeline. And to construct such a function, you'd define it as val f = trim >> tolower; val x = str |> f; - Bent
Oct 27 2008
Bent Rasmussen wrote:"Robert Fraser" <fraserofthenight gmail.com> skrev i meddelelsen news:ge3mit$i33$1 digitalmars.com...BTW, incidentally std.functional defines both operators in prefix form: auto x = pipe!(trim, tolower)(str); or auto x = compose!(tolower, trim)(str); AndreiSo what's the difference? That is to say, what would tolower(trim(str)) translate to?It would translate to something like val x = str |> trim |> tolower; So it looks like a pipeline. And to construct such a function, you'd define it as val f = trim >> tolower; val x = str |> f;
Oct 27 2008
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:I'm sure it has to do with what you're used to looking at. I forget which one is which (heck, I was forgetting which was which even when I was taking a logic class). However, & for "and" has a precedent in natural language. | for "or" is a bit out there, but at least it looks significantly different than &, which cannot be said about ^/v.I don't know about you, but to me 'and' and 'or' make for much more readable boolean expressions than the standard mathematical symbols ^ and v. Heck, && and || are more readable to me than the math symbols.Hm, in my experimental emacs shenanigans I had && displayed as a wedge and || displayed as a vee and heck do they look good.
Oct 26 2008
Robert Fraser escribió:Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:You can remember those symbols by remembering that U is Union, and "inverted U" is intersection. Now U points to the same place as v, and "inverted U" points to the same place as ^, and "union/or", "intersection/and" are similar concepts.I'm sure it has to do with what you're used to looking at. I forget which one is which (heck, I was forgetting which was which even when I was taking a logic class). However, & for "and" has a precedent in natural language. | for "or" is a bit out there, but at least it looks significantly different than &, which cannot be said about ^/v.I don't know about you, but to me 'and' and 'or' make for much more readable boolean expressions than the standard mathematical symbols ^ and v. Heck, && and || are more readable to me than the math symbols.Hm, in my experimental emacs shenanigans I had && displayed as a wedge and || displayed as a vee and heck do they look good.
Oct 27 2008
This is a matter of taste and habbit, but my preference is (A1) ¬(p ʌ q) (A2) not (p and q) (A3) !(p && q) Eiffel also uses (A2) and it looks much better than (A3). Still, in my oppinion your preference is still better than the status quo. Also, consider (B1) p ≠(d ≤ q) Relational operators also look much better and look more homogeneous and consistent with logical operators in (A1). - Bent "Bill Baxter" <wbaxter gmail.com> skrev i meddelelsen news:mailman.289.1225071455.3087.digitalmars-d puremagic.com...On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 10:16 AM, Bent Rasmussen <IncredibleShrinkingSphere gmail.com> wrote:Agreed. As an example: what domain does not include boolean expressions? And how many domains include vector and matrix operations? Quite many.It would be a massive boost for readability in those domains (and in all domains, with boolean expressions).I don't know about you, but to me 'and' and 'or' make for much more readable boolean expressions than the standard mathematical symbols ^ and v. Heck, && and || are more readable to me than the math symbols.The problem is not the operators themselves; a language does not loose anything by extension, it is how exactly to best arrive at the goal of having the code look nice and readable with those operators. - Bent Hm, anyone fancy the |> operator?What would that mean? --bb
Oct 26 2008