Positive

[Walter Bright]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> About proliferation of types: I don't think that follows at all. Math 
> found positive numbers special enough to dedicate them a special 
> notation (|R with subscript "+"). There's also a special notation for 
> nonzero real numbers (|R with superscript "*"). There is no special 
> notation for any of the sets you mentioned. That is bound to mean 
> something.

I'm not a math major. But in college I took 4 years of math, up through 
integration in the complex plane and branch cuts (which I never did 
properly understand <g>). Every engineering/physics class was a math 
class. I never saw this notation. I am not suggesting it doesn't exist, 
just that it became commonplace fairly recently, or that it isn't 
commonplace at least at the undergraduate level. This plays into the 
numbers issue you mentioned.