Help with disambiguation

Bill Spight bspight at pacbell.net
Thu Apr 3 20:33:12 UTC 2003


Hi!

In implementing combinatorial games I would like to use the standard
representation, {L|R}, where L and R are sets of combinatorial games.
Numbers are combinatorial games, so {4, 7 | 5} is one. Since the {|}
form is different from {}, I thought things would go OK. 

However, I have run into a snag. {1/2 | 10} is a combinatorial game.
{1<2 | 10} = {true}. The compiler, it seems, compiles both to bytecodes.
Then the first one produces a "does not understand" error later, upon
evaluation. 

I have considered checking for a numerical expression, so that a
numerical expression followed by a vertical bar says that we have a
combinatorial game, but maybe it would be better to disambiguate the two
upon evaluation, when the error is produced. I have studied the parser
enough to think that I can do the first, but am not sure how to handle
the error situation.

Any help greatly appreciated. :-)

Many thanks,

Bill



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