[lojban] Re: Numerical questions

[Minimiscience <minimiscience@gmail.com>]

de'i li 11 pi'e 10 pi'e 2008 la'o fy. jozis. .fy. cusku zoi skamyxatra.
> Supposing I were to say (for example), 'li reci'. Under most circumstances,
> this would be assumed to be in base-ten, and mean twenty-three. Most of the
> time this is clearly what is meant. However, there are some cases, and the
> example I would give is memory addresses in assembly-language programming and
> such, where one might need to specify the radix. In the memory-address
> example, decimal is probably not what is meant, but it could equally be octal
> (nineteen) or hex (thirty-five). Is there some way of unambiguously
> specifying the radix in Lojban?
.skamyxatra

Use the mathematical operator "{ju'u}", which causes the left operand to be
interpreted in the base specified by the right operand (which is assumed to be
in base 10).  So 023 would be "{li reci ju'u bi}," and 0x23 is "{li reci ju'u
paxa}."

> My second question is a little less crucial. Going back to base-ten, ten is
> 'li pano' and 'one hundred' is 'li panono'. By the time we get to 'panonono'
> for 'one thousand' it is getting a bit unwieldy, but fortunately we have
> 'ki'o' to help us out. 'li paki'oki'o' is not too bad for 'one million', but
> for larger numbers even this is a bit cumbersome. Am I missing a concise way
> to represent (for example) 10^15?

You could say "{li pano te'a pamu}" (10 to the power of 15), or you could
express it in scientific notation with "{li gei pamu}."  See chapter 18 of the
Lojban Reference Grammar for more information.

mu'omi'e la'o gy. Minimiscience .gy.

-- 
do ganai ka'e tcidu dei gi djuno lo dukse


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