From Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk  Tue May 31 13:26:09 2005
From: Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk ( (Ted Harding))
Date: Tue May 31 14:00:50 2005
Subject: [Rd] minus: operator and sign (PR#7908)
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.050531110718.Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <XFMail.050531121211.Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk>

On 31-May-05 Ted Harding wrote:
> [...]
> But it is always safe (and often prudent) to force precedence
> with parentheses -- at least you yourself are then absolutely
> sure of exactly what is going to happen, which is the really
> important thing (and this is Rule 2, which takes precedence
> over Rule 1).
> 
> So if you want to force "-2^2" and similar to be the square
> of "-2" then do "(-2)^2". And it adds clarity to things like
> 
>   2 - - - 2^2

PS: And will also avoid typopathological events such as

  > x<-y

when what you really meant was

  > x< -y
  [1] FALSE

Ted.


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Date: 31-May-05                                       Time: 11:50:07
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[Rd] minus: operator and sign (PR#7908)
 (Ted Harding