Re: Why no ** operator in Modula2?

Article View: comp.lang.modula2

Article #2298

#2298

From: Ronald Cole
Date: Tue, 04 Jun 1991 17:54

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In article <1302.284A5A7F@puddle.fidonet.org> Ben.Stuyts@p6.f202.n281.z2.fidonet.org (Ben Stuyts) writes:
   dww@math.fu-berlin.de (Debora Weber-Wulff) writes:

    DW> The question came up in class today: Why is there no ** or ^
    DW> (x to the nth power) operator in standard Modula2?
    DW> To make you start your own private module collection of goodies?
    DW> Because it is machine dependant???

   Probably because it is the spirit of Wirth's languages that they are
   easy to parse and it is easy to generate code for the underlying machine
   architecture. And as there are usually no 'power' type instructions, Wirth
   did not add it to the language but put it in the MathLib library instead.

Because x ** y is written in Modula-2 as MathLib0.exp(y * MathLib0.log(x)).
It's so obvious that Wirth didn't even bother to mention it in his book! :-)

--
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From: rjc@devo.unify.com (Ronald Cole)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.modula2
Subject: Re: Why no ** operator in Modula2?
Message-ID: <RJC.91Jun4105446@devo.unify.com>
Date: 4 Jun 91 17:54:46 GMT
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In-Reply-To: Ben.Stuyts@p6.f202.n281.z2.fidonet.org's message of 31 May 91 03:50:40 GMT

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