From jcowan@reutershealth.com Thu Jan 24 13:51:51 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: jcowan@reutershealth.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 24 Jan 2002 21:51:51 -0000 Received: (qmail 49452 invoked from network); 24 Jan 2002 21:51:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.171) by m9.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 24 Jan 2002 21:51:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.reutershealth.com) (204.243.9.36) by mta3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 24 Jan 2002 21:51:50 -0000 Received: from reutershealth.com (IDENT:cowan@[10.65.117.21]) by mail.reutershealth.com (Pro-8.9.3/Pro-8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA26466; Thu, 24 Jan 2002 16:52:14 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3C5081EB.3090405@reutershealth.com> Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 16:51:39 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.6) Gecko/20011120 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Brook Conner Cc: bob@rattlesnake.com, lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: lojban as a programming language [was Re: [lojban] Lojban for lay programmers] References: <267B5602-1102-11D6-9015-003065B787D6@nellardo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: John Cowan X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=8122456 X-Yahoo-Profile: john_w_cowan Brook Conner wrote: > (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)). The additive inverse of NaN is NaN, I think, depending on your definition of inverse: NaN + NaN is not 0, but 0 - NaN is definitely NaN. As for not being a group, if they weren't a group over the defined IEEE operations, that would mean that something not an IEEE-float was being delivered, which is self-contradictory, since every bit combination has an IEEE meaning. > Another problem of semantics is choosing the subset of the vocabulary > and making sure the user knows what it is. Are you going for an > imperative model? Lots of "ko" running around. "ko" can be defaulted, though, if that's a convention established between speaker and listener. -- Not to perambulate || John Cowan the corridors || http://www.reutershealth.com during the hours of repose || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan in the boots of ascension. \\ Sign in Austrian ski-resort hotel