GNU bug report logs - #934
In CVS Emacs, calc-eval gives multiplication higher precidence than division

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From: merlyn <at> stonehenge.com (Randal L. Schwartz)
To: "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman <at> gmail.com>
Cc: Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik <at> gmail.com>, bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org,
        emacs-devel <at> gnu.org
Subject: bug#934: In CVS Emacs, calc-eval gives multiplication higher  precidence  than division
Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:43:16 -0700

>>>>> "Lennart" == Lennart Borgman (gmail) <lennart.borgman <at> gmail.com> writes:

Lennart> Of course I can see that the behaviour you want saves you a lot of key
Lennart> strokes. My question is really about the default value. You can easily
Lennart> change that, of course. The question is really if you prefer the old
Lennart> default and in that case what arguments you want to present for that.

There's no need to change the longstanding defaults, because it would break
things.  You already have a knob you can tweak if you think that "2 a / 3 b"
should multiply by b, rather than divide by it.  That's a personal choice.

Frankly, I'd never touch that knob, because it looks to me like it should
divide by b.  And I think most mathemeticians would agree, and that's the
target for that part of Calc.  Stop thinking computer science.  Think
*math* notation.

-- 
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<merlyn <at> stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Smalltalk/Perl/Unix consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
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