From nellardo@concentric.net Mon May 22 09:58:30 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 28747 invoked from network); 22 May 2000 16:58:29 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 22 May 2000 16:58:29 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO darius.concentric.net) (207.155.198.79) by mta2 with SMTP; 22 May 2000 16:58:29 -0000 Received: from mcfeely.concentric.net (mcfeely.concentric.net [207.155.198.83]) by darius.concentric.net (8.9.1a/(98/12/15 5.12)) id MAA02389; Mon, 22 May 2000 12:58:28 -0400 (EDT) [1-800-745-2747 The Concentric Network] Errors-To: Received: from concentric.net ([216.112.226.144]) by mcfeely.concentric.net (8.9.1a) id MAA24360; Mon, 22 May 2000 12:58:26 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <39296707.A3D40886@concentric.net> Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 12:58:18 -0400 Reply-To: nellardo@concentric.net Organization: Herds of Wild Buffalo Girls X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 (Macintosh; I; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Robin Lee Powell Cc: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] More on lojban programatic semantics: Strong typing and inferencing of types References: <200005220306.XAA19855@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Brook Conner Robin Lee Powell wrote: > rlpowell@calum> ll saclu > saclu decimal > x1 (me'o) is the [decimal/binary] equivalent of > fractional x2 (me'o) in base x3 (quantity) > > [conversion from fractions to decimal-point based > notation] (cf. namcu, frinu) Recalling that selbri of all sorts are asserting a relationship, I would expect that "conversion" here is an example and aid to English readers - saclu does not necessarily imply action or changing of data. > rlpowell@calum> ll me\'o > > me'o LI the mex > the mathematical expression (unevaluated); convert > unevaluated mathematical expression to sumti > > So the x1 of saclu is a mathematical expression that we're converting from a > fraction. That seems to have nothing to do with variable declaration > to me. We're not necessarily "converting" it in a variable-assignment or type-casting sense - we're asserting that x1 and x2 are equivalent, if we give both x1 and x2. "me'o" (as I read the above) lets you use a mekso wherever you could use a sumti. If we replace one or the other of x1/x2 with "ko", wouldn't that be converting it? As in: la stokuot. saclu ko -- Provide the fractional equivalent of the decimal "la stokuot." > Why not use the mekso variable declaration constructs? Because not all variables are mekso. A file isn't a mekso. Neither is a string. Or are you suggesting that we use "operator overloading" kinds of things for variables that aren't numbers or numerical expressions? Brook