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Re: verifying precedence

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On 5/1/2014 2:59 PM, Stefan Ram wrote:
> =?UTF-8?B?Sm9zaHVhIENyYW5tZXIg8J+Qpw==?=  <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> writes:

[ Yet more mangling ! :-P ]

>    The learning capabilities of students of Java must be by
>    orders of magnitude smaller than those of students of
>    natural languages, when the students of Java can't memorize
>    the precendence of 37 operators.

Your analogy isn't quite right here. I don't know Italian, but I do know 
some French, so I'll use that here instead in my analogy. French, like 
Italian, has a load of different variants [neglecting accents here 
because this IME doesn't let me do it easily):
* infinitive (etre),
* 6 present indicative (suis, es, est, sommes, etes, sont)
* 6 simple future (ser + ai, ai, a, ons, ez, ont)
* 6 conditional (ser + ais, ais, ait, ions, iez, aient)
* 6 imperfect (et + ais, ais, ait, ions, iez, aient)
* 6 simple past (fus, fus, fut, fumes, futes, furent)
* 6 present subjunctive (sois, sois, soit, soyons, soyez, soient)
* 6 imperfect subjunctive (fusse, fusses, fut, fussions, fussiez, fussent)
* 3 imperative (sois, soyons, soyez)
* Present participle (etant)
* Past participle (ete)

That's a total of 48 forms (if my math is correct), although if you want 
to be a little more precise, 5 of them are repeated. There is a bit of 
structure to it (and etre is an unusually complex verb), but I was 
unable to list the simple past and imperfect subjunctive without 
checking my dictionary. Why? Because I've never had to use them, and 
(with the exception of "il fut"), I've never even *seen* them before.

It's like that with operator precedence: sure, there may not be all that 
much to learn/memorize, but if you never use it, it's going to leave 
your head as quickly as it came in.



-- 
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not 
tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth

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verifying precedence Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2014-05-01 04:50 -0700
  Re: verifying precedence leif.roar@invalid.com (Leif Roar Moldskred) - 2014-05-01 07:04 -0500
    Re: verifying precedence Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2014-05-01 10:35 -0500
      Re: verifying precedence Joerg Meier <joergmmeier@arcor.de> - 2014-05-01 17:40 +0200
        Re: verifying precedence Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2014-05-01 10:49 -0500
          Re: verifying precedence Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2014-05-01 17:05 -0500
            Re: verifying precedence Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2014-05-02 10:22 -0700
            Re: verifying precedence "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2014-05-04 10:53 +0100
              Re: verifying precedence Simon Lewis <simonlewis2001@gmail.com> - 2014-05-04 13:23 +0200
          Re: verifying precedence Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2014-05-01 18:51 -0400
          Re: verifying precedence Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2014-05-01 19:00 -0400
          Re: verifying precedence Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2014-05-01 17:48 -0700
          Re: verifying precedence Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> - 2014-05-02 13:29 -0400
      Re: verifying precedence Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2014-05-01 18:50 -0400
        Re: verifying precedence Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2014-05-01 19:18 -0400
    Re: verifying precedence Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2014-05-01 17:46 -0700
      Re: verifying precedence Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2014-05-01 21:27 -0400

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