[squeak-dev] [Vm-dev] Re: [Pharo-project] About ~= and ~~

[Nicolas Cellier]

2011/10/19 Alexander Lazarević <laza at blobworks.com>:
>
> Nicolas,
>
> it seems that I have failed to express myself clearly, so that you were misreading me. What I was trying to say was that I assume that most people get introduced to the symbols = and ≠ for equality and unequality early on. And that the symbol ≠ for unequality isn't (is not) ~ nor any composition that includes ~.
> I didn't intent to say that I assume that ~ is a very common symbol for the NOT operator and that most people learn about it as early as they learn about = and ≠.
>

Nice case of misinterpretation indeed!
My failure...

Nicolas

> So my gut feeling still is, that one would favor an expression that contains the most familiar = symbol (or ==) over an equivalent expression of same complexity, but that contains ~ (~= or ~~) instead, which is not as deeply rooted in our brains.
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> 2011/10/18 Nicolas Cellier <nicolas.cellier.aka.nice at gmail.com>
>>
>> Well, is ~ interpretation ubiquitous ?
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> With the above it's hopefully no surprise that I think it's not.
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>> I rather learned ¬ NOT SIGN. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_not
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> Same here, but over the years I also saw !x, bar below x, bar above x, dot below x and even dot above x ... meaning NOT.
>
>>
>> And if ≠ is translated /= in ASCII (FORTRAN 95 & ADA)
>> Then by analogy ~= could ambiguously mean ≃ ASYMPOTICALLY EQUAL TO and
>> ~~ mean ≈ ALMOST EQUAL TO unless it is ≅ APPROXIMATELY EQUAL TO .
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> Alex
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>