From xod@sixgirls.org Thu Jan 24 12:37:01 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: xod@reva.sixgirls.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 24 Jan 2002 20:37:01 -0000 Received: (qmail 3794 invoked from network); 24 Jan 2002 20:37:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m9.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 24 Jan 2002 20:37:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO reva.sixgirls.org) (216.27.131.50) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 24 Jan 2002 20:37:00 -0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by reva.sixgirls.org (8.11.6+3.4W/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g0OKawJ19307 for ; Thu, 24 Jan 2002 15:36:58 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 15:36:57 -0500 (EST) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: lojban as a programming language [was Re: [lojban] Lojban for lay programmers] In-Reply-To: <267B5602-1102-11D6-9015-003065B787D6@nellardo.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Invent Yourself X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=1138703 X-Yahoo-Profile: throwing_back_the_apple On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Brook Conner wrote: > For example, when evaluating a lojban sentence, do you use strict > evaluation or lazy evaluation? I'm talking machine semantics here, not > parsing syntax. The canonical example from programming literature for > the difference between strict and lazy is something like the following: We actually had a discussion about this a while ago. It revolved around the question: does lu'e la djan mean " "John" ", or "a symbol for "John""; is it the symbol, or does it mean the symbol? > 2. Strictly speaking, ci'i is not a number. Oh sure, it may be a > transfinite number (ci'i no, ci'i pa, etc.), but a transfinite number is > definitely not in the set of integers, rationals, or even real numbers > (mathematically speaking, IEEE floating point numbers are none of these, > are not even a group (I don't think NaN has an additive inverse, and Inf > has very peculiar behavior)). In Lojban, I think ci'i gets treated just like any other member of selma'o pa. And I find that refreshing. > Don't get me wrong - another parser for lojban is great, but designing > the semantics, even for mekso, to a level where a computer can > predictably deal with it (and deal with it in a manner comparable to a > human) is not as simple as it might first seem. At least it's simple than doing so with any other "full" language. -- The tao that can be tar(1)ed is not the entire Tao. The path that can be specified is not the Full Path.