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Re: The Concepts and Confusions of Prefix, Infix, Postfix and Fully
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| Dan Bensen 2007-05-09, 7:07 pm |
| Xah Lee wrote:
> The common concepts of “prefix, postfix, infix” are notions in
> algebraic notations only.
The common concepts of computer programming are defined by computer
programmers, not by mathematicians. The term "prefix notation" when
used in the programming world does not indicate "algebraic prefix
notation" as defined by mathematicians. The word "prefix" is a generic
English word meaning roughly that the thing being referred to occurs
before something else. This accurately describes the position of
the operator in a Lisp s-expression.
> Another way to see that lisp notation are not “pre” anything, is by
> realizing that the “head” f in (f a b c) can be defined to be placed
> anywhere. e.g. (a b c f) or even (a f b c), and its syntax analysis
> remains the same.
Is this consistent with the CL spec or any standard Lisp spec?
I've never heard of such a thing.
--
Dan
www.prairienet.org/~dsb/
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