Re: Definable operators

After reading this thread with interest I kept flipflopping as to
whether I liked being able to overload (re-define) the + operator.
Just for the record I see the evils of this, however, I like being
able to do it for cases like complex, or, matrices. I will not enter
into a debate about this, that is not the reason I said it. I just
wanted to be clear on where I stand.


That out of the way. What about including the other punctuation
characters that are not used in a given language as available for
definition. Technical issues aside (I know this can be ugly) I think
that this scheme has some merit. A heirarchy can be defined for
precedence of operator that stays with the language.


+ -
* /
% ^
` (matrix inversion?)
~ $ (low order ala +-)
etc


The parser could be set for associativity and precedence and allow
meaning devoid context (` is not used that I know of except in shell
scripts) thereby flagging to the reader of code that this is a
function call; go look at the code to see what it does.


It seems to me that the benifit of syntactic sugar in terms of
readability of code is immense. I would much rather define complex
and some operators over the complex type and just be able to write
expressions with it than have to string together some long series of
statements that end up reading like assembly language.


complex a,b,c,d;
a = complexadd(b,c);
d = complexmult(a,c);
Vs.
d = (b+c)*c;
or even
d = (b~c)>;


I know that the complex type is a poor example because it is math and
plus pretty well means plus. However, I like being able to cat two
(or more) strings together with plus rather than a series of function
calls with temporary results.


Well, I know this thread has died out a little, but, I would like to
know what people thought about the idea of using the non-used
punctuation as definable operators. I admit the closer I look the
less unused punctuation there is, but, nontheless...


Ephram Cohen
Psychoacoustics Lab
UC Berkeley
Ephram@ear.berkeley.edu
[Previous messages agreed that using + and * for operations recognizable
as addition and multiplication is a fine idea. -John]


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