From: dalke at bioreason.com (Andrew Dalke)
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1999 18:51:57 -0600
Subject: converting perl to python - simple questions.
References: <000201be929f$636d10a0$5fa02299@tim>
Message-ID: <3728FEAD.CF650A4@bioreason.com>
Content-Length: 2216
X-UID: 582                                                  

Uncle Tim said:
> Here's a topic for civil debate:  Resolved:  returning different stuff
> depending on whether an expression is in array or scalar context is no
> worse than killing those of your classmates wearing shirts with sports
> insignia <wink>.

Using the formalism of symbolic algebra we start with the universe 
of concepts denoted U.  We choose two items, A,B which are elements
of U such that:

  A = "returning different stuff depending on whether an expression is
in array or scalar context"

and

  B = "killing those of your classmates wearing shirts with sports
insignia"


It is obvious that there exists some metric M which induces an
ordering in U such that if X,Y are elements of U then the statement
"X is worse than Y" is either correct or incorrect.  We denote "X
is worse than Y" by the expressions "X > Y" or "Y < X".  The other
standard expression for equality and inequality apply as normal,
and it should be observed that this is a partial ordering as there
can be some X,Y in U where X < Y and X > Y are both incorrect (so
X == Y) using M but X is not identical to Y in U.

We can derive such a metric M through newscasts and other forms of
media.  From this it is a relatively trivial matter to conclude that

    A < B

given M(media) on U.  Hence it is seen that it is not true that B >= A
and so the statement proposed by <tim_one at email.msn.com> in his
paper <000201be929f$636d10a0$5fa02299 at tim>.

 "returning different stuff depending on whether an expression is
  in array or scalar context is no worse than killing those of your
  classmates wearing shirts with sports insignia"

is a correct one, and that we can make the even stronger assertion

 "returning different stuff depending on whether an expression is
  in array or scalar context is less worse than killing those of
  your classmates wearing shirts with sports insignia"

as the equivalence case has been shown to be false for the given
M(media).  It remains to be seen if there exists some M for which
these statements are incorrect.

(Whew - got that math lingo coursing through my system now, and
hence we see that I should halt before I further such discussions :)

						Andrew
						dalke at acm.org




