Richard O'Keefe schrieb:
On Jun 3, 2010, at 1:13 AM, Maciej Piechotka wrote:
On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 14:01 +1200, Richard O'Keefe wrote:
For what applications is it "useful" to use the same symbol for operations obeying (or in the case of floating point operations, *approximating* operations obeying) distinct laws?
If the given operations do share something in common. For example * is usually commutative. However you do use it with quaternions (Hamilton product). You even write ij = k despite the fact that ji = -k.
I think you just made my point: Commutativity is NOT one of the standard properties that * is EXPECTED to possess. However, it IS one of the properties that + is expected to possess, which is why Java's abuse of + for string concatenation is so bad.
Java's (+) is not even associative: ("text" + 2) + 3 = "text23" "text" + (2+3) = "text5"