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Re: Suggestion for Enhancement; B, H, ... and D

2002-02-21 15:38:26
Jacques responded,

| Is `(' legal at the beginning of  an action?

Yes.  It means save to a folder in $MAILDIR whose name begins with a left
parenthesis.

When I suggested,

Perhaps ANDing or ORing could be specified as a level is opened?

He replied,

| I don't like that,
|
|  - because OR is  a binary operator, and I feel  its "natural" place for
|    readability is rather between operands, unless RPN|Lisp addiction ;

"RPN" -- really more polite to call it "RLN" -- is postfix notation, with
the operator specified after the operands, as in dc or FORTH.  What I was
considering was prefix notation, with the operator first, aka Lukasiewicz
notation.  I wouldn't call one or another "natural" because algebraic
notation doesn't occur in nature; however, I'll agree that it's unfamiliar.

| when `( a || b ) && c' is written as
|
| :0
| (
|   * a
| )(
|   * b
| )
| * c
| action2

I'm sorry, but I don't see that.  What in there gives (a||b) precedence over
the "&&c" part?  Sequence?  What if we wanted a&&(b||c), where a, being less
likely than (b||c), should be tested first?  Your proposal, Jacques, works
well when all the ANDs have precedence over any of the ORs, but whenever any
OR has precedence over any AND, it doesn't adapt.

| Of course the  syntax is not symmetric between AND and  OR, but like the
| implicit priority anyway.

An implicit default priority is one thing.  Permitting no other priority is
quite another.



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