Exponential operator

[Don]

Miles wrote:
> Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
>> Neither of the natural candidates, a^b and a**b, are an option, as they
>> are, respectively, already taken and ambiguous.
> 
> I think that a ** b can be used, is not ambiguous except for the
> tokenizer of the language. It is the same difference you have with:
> 
>   a ++ b  -> identifier 'a', unary operator '++', identifier 'b' (not
> parseable)
> 
>   a + + b  -> identifier 'a', binary operator '+', unary operator '+',
> identifier 'b' (parseable)
> 
> I don't know anyone who writes ** to mean multiplication and
> dereference, except when obfuscating code. People usually prefer adding
> a whitespace between both operators, for obvious readability purposes.
> 
> I think it is perfectly reasonable to deprecate current usage of '**'
> for the next release, and a few releases later, make '**' a new
> operator. I doubt anyone would notice.

That doesn't work, because you still get new code being converted from 
C. It can't look the same, but behave differently.

> 
> Other examples:
> 
>   a-- - b
>   a - --b
> 
>   a && b
>   a & &b

You didn't respond to my assertion: even if you _could_ do it, why would 
you want to? ** sucks as an exponential operator. I dispute the 
contention that ** is a natural choice. It comes from the same language 
that brought you  IF X .NE. 2