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From: James Harris on 4 Mar 2010 18:47
On 4 Mar, 22:44, Rick Jones <rick.jon...(a)hp.com> wrote:
> In comp.unix.programmer Nick <3-nos...(a)temporary-address.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > If wrong you are, my hat I will eat.

Or, more Yoda-esque: If wrong you are, eat my hat I will.

> Yes, Master Yoda :)

Reminds me of a phrase from, I think, Watership Down (the book, not
the animation): It's lost you are is it? Where was that from? Not the
far reaches of the Empire but deepest Wales. Maybe the force is strong
there also....

James
From: Keith Thompson on 4 Mar 2010 19:31
Tim Streater <timstreater(a)waitrose.com> writes:
> On 04/03/2010 20:35, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:
>>> And "x == 7" is much more readable than "7 == x".
>>>
>>> At least, for English speakers it is. I don't know; maybe there are
>>> languages in which saying "if x is equal to y" implies that x is the
>>> constant and y is the variable.
>>>
>> Nonsense. This is nothing to do with speaking English. There are plenty
>> of examples of English prose that use that ordering, from the King James
>> Bible through handbooks on baseball to Richard Dawkins. You only find
>> the ordering natural in C for purely circular reasons: It's natural to
>> (most) C programmers because that's how most C language code that they
>> have read is written. (And it's written that way because "It's
>> natural.") Nothing more, and nothing as a result of the English language.
>
> Rubbish. You don't say "if that chicken is an animal then I'll eat
> it", you say "If that animal is a chicken then I'll eat it".

The word "is" isn't an equality operator in that context; it's more
like a set membership operator. In fact, I think that most uses of
"is" in English mean something other than equality.

I suggest that in cases where "is" is used to denote equality,
usage is more symmetric than you might think. "My brother is Fred
Thompson" and "Fred Thompson is my brother" seem equally clear to me
(and equally false, since that's not my brother's name).

If that (a specific creature) animal (more specific information to
help identify the creature) is a chicken (is a member of the set
of chickens) then I'll eat it. Swapping "chicken" and "animal"
changes the meaning of the sentence. By contrast, "x == 7" and
"7 == x" have exactly the same meaning in C; the only question is
which one more clearly expresses that meaning.

As I've said, I agree that "x == 7" is clearer. More precisely,
I can state authoritatively that it's clearer *to me*. If others
state that both forms are equally clear *to them*, I have no reason
to doubt it.

And someone who finds "x == 7" and "7 == x" equally clear is probably
thinking about it more clearly than I'm able to, and possibly having
trouble figuring out what my problem is. (I'm not entirely sure
about that myself.)

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u(a)mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"
From: Peter Moylan on 4 Mar 2010 19:57
Tim Streater wrote:
> On 04/03/2010 20:35, Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> And "x == 7" is much more readable than "7 == x".
>>>
>>> At least, for English speakers it is. I don't know; maybe there are
>>> languages in which saying "if x is equal to y" implies that x is the
>>> constant and y is the variable.
>>>
>> Nonsense. This is nothing to do with speaking English. There are plenty
>> of examples of English prose that use that ordering, from the King James
>> Bible through handbooks on baseball to Richard Dawkins. You only find
>> the ordering natural in C for purely circular reasons: It's natural to
>> (most) C programmers because that's how most C language code that they
>> have read is written. (And it's written that way because "It's
>> natural.") Nothing more, and nothing as a result of the English language.
>
> Rubbish. You don't say "if that chicken is an animal then I'll eat it",
> you say "If that animal is a chicken then I'll eat it".
>
That depends on what "is" is.

--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
From: Seebs on 4 Mar 2010 19:54
On 2010-03-05, Keith Thompson <kst-u(a)mib.org> wrote:
> I suggest that in cases where "is" is used to denote equality,
> usage is more symmetric than you might think. "My brother is Fred
> Thompson" and "Fred Thompson is my brother" seem equally clear to me
> (and equally false, since that's not my brother's name).

They're both equally clear, but they are communicating different things.
One of them is telling us something we might not already know, about an
entity already known to be your brother. The other is telling us something
we might not already know, about an entity already known to be Fred Thompson.

Similarly, there's a big difference between "the person who committed the
murder was the butler" and "the butler committed the murder". The former
is giving you information about a murder you already know about, the other
is giving you information about a butler you already know about.

> And someone who finds "x == 7" and "7 == x" equally clear is probably
> thinking about it more clearly than I'm able to, and possibly having
> trouble figuring out what my problem is. (I'm not entirely sure
> about that myself.)

See above. We use sentence structure to communicate additional information
that is not purely a function of the semantics of the words used.

-s
--
Copyright 2010, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / usenet-nospam(a)seebs.net
http://www.seebs.net/log/ <-- lawsuits, religion, and funny pictures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Game_(Scientology) <-- get educated!
From: Keith Thompson on 4 Mar 2010 20:03
Seebs <usenet-nospam(a)seebs.net> writes:
> On 2010-03-05, Keith Thompson <kst-u(a)mib.org> wrote:
>> I suggest that in cases where "is" is used to denote equality,
>> usage is more symmetric than you might think. "My brother is Fred
>> Thompson" and "Fred Thompson is my brother" seem equally clear to me
>> (and equally false, since that's not my brother's name).
>
> They're both equally clear, but they are communicating different things.
> One of them is telling us something we might not already know, about an
> entity already known to be your brother. The other is telling us something
> we might not already know, about an entity already known to be Fred Thompson.

And the first sentence is less valid if I have more than one brother.

Perhaps this is a better example: "The ratio of a circle's
circumference to its diameter is pi" vs. "pi is the ratio of a
circle's circumference to its diameter". But even there, the second
sentence looks more like a definition of "pi" than the first one does.

[snip]

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u(a)mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"
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