Another spinoza challenge

[Dennis \(Icarus\)]

Um, it is *you* how just introduced a context, i.e. the context in which
any identifier has already been described.

Would that not be covered when teaching about identifiers?

In any case I say again that if you are considering all contexts you have
to consider that in some contexts it is NOT valid, such as an
implementation which has a keyword of __MAX_POWER (which it is allowed
to).

They could, but according to the rules regarding how an identifer can be
defined, regardless who defines it, it's valid.

<snip>

I disagree.

And it's pretty clear we'll continue to do so.
I'll note the author of the test disagreed with your interpretation, likely
just wanting to test wwhether they understoond that, according to the
language, underscores can form part of an identifer.

Dennis

 

[Beej Jorgensen]

Have you compared how your scales read in summer and winter?

They didn't take into account the gravitational pull of the Sun!
Lawsuit, baby!

-Beej

 

[Ike Naar]

Weight, for nearly a millennium, has been a measure of bulk mass.
For example, food is legally labelled with its "weight", not mass.
If you sell the same mass of produce with a price per unit weight,
it costs the same no matter where it is sold. Why are you failing
to understand concepts that they teach ten-year olds?

If this is the way you want to discuss things, then I'm finished.

 

[Beej Jorgensen]

I placed the Earth on my scale, and it told me that the Earth weighed
approximately 2 pounds. I was told that the Earth "weighs" about 1.3*10^25
pounds.

Yeah, but that's how much it weighs on Earth. So put your scale on
Earth, and then put *another* Earth on the scale.

Is my scale broken?

It certainly will be after that.

-Beej

 

[Flash Gordon]

Would that not be covered when teaching about identifiers?

Yes. However, that is a situation where the identifier has

They could, but according to the rules regarding how an identifer can be
defined, regardless who defines it, it's valid.

According to the rules of C there can be implementations where neither
the implementation nor a user can define an identifier with such a name
since it is a keyword, and neither you nor the implementation can use a
keyword as an identifier.

And it's pretty clear we'll continue to do so.
True.

I'll note the author of the test disagreed with your interpretation,
likely just wanting to test wwhether they understoond that, according to
the language, underscores can form part of an identifer.

Which does not mean that the author of the test was right. In fact, I
believe it is likely that the author of the test was simply not aware of
the issue at all (i.e. was not aware it is reserved for use by the
implementation).

Note that I'm not the only one who considered it to be an issue with the
test.

 

[Phil Carmody]

I did not say that, or anything resembling it. If there's anything
inaccurate in what I *did* say, please point it out.

You need to munge the syntax in Perl. If needing to munge syntax
in C is enough to make it not capable of passing by reference,
then Perl also cannot pass by reference. So either Perl cannot
pass by reference, which puts you in contradiction with the people
who designed the language, or the conditions you bring up are in
fact completely irrelevant. Either is good enough to be dubbed
'inaccurate'.

Phil

 

[Phil Carmody]

If this is the way you want to discuss things, then I'm finished.

I apologise for including unassailably facts with my post.
Sorry if this confused you.

Phil

 

[Nick Keighley]

Every context apart from those populated by revisionists who
think that they can pervert the meaning of a perfectly standard
word.




Oh dear. Looks as if you are as wrong as he was. I knew some basic
English - 'weight' is mass - and that's all that matters in this
context. He was pendantic, yes, but basing his pedantry on incorrect
information, the same incorrect information you base your view on.

I assume in the same interview you failed to distinguish energy from
power.
These terms are part of a technical vocabulary they don't mean the
same
thing to a physicist as they do to the man on Clapham omnibus.

This is why you were asked for a context.

 

[Nick Keighley]

bartc said:



Everyone who is ever likely to use a scale is (or should be) taught
the difference between weight and mass during their schooling, and
they are also taught the appropriate units for each, so they should
understand Newtons just fine.

I doubt everyone knows what a newton is. I doubt most people know
what a newton is. I bet if I checked with my friends (who are
reasonably
well informed) most of them wouldn't know what a newton was or why the
difference between weight and mass was important.

 

[Nick Keighley]

And where exactly could you expect to find a "non-accelerating
environment"?

free fall

 

[Nick Keighley]

Not enough information, obviously. My guess is force. Why do you
ignore the possibility that it's measuring torque?

because no one walks into the bathroom wondering what their torque is
today.

"Join Torque Watchers today and watch the newton metres just fall
away!"

 

[Phil Carmody]

I assume in the same interview you failed to distinguish energy from
power.

You assume things which are false. You seem to be assuming that
I failed to distinguish the force from gravitational attraction
from the property of bulk mass. Again, a false assumption. I
just don't do it by juggling two different words for heft and
unthinkingly pretending that one of them doesn't mean heft.

Phil

 

[Dik T. Winter]

> In article <[email protected]>,

>
> <off topic:> ....
> So, instead of saying "it weighs 10 kilograms" it would be more accurate
> to say "its mass is 10 kilograms" or "it weighs 98 Newton" (on Earth).

I think the UK "Weights and measures act" does not agree.

 

[James Kuyper]

jameskuyper wrote: ....

I placed the Earth on my scale, and it told me that the Earth weighed
approximately 2 pounds. I was told that the Earth "weighs" about
1.3*10^25 pounds. Is my scale broken?

No, the scale is correctly reporting the force on the Earth due to the
gravitational pull of the scale. The statement that was made to you
about the "weight" of the earth was meaningless; as indicated by your
experiment, the actual weight of the Earth depends upon how strong the
source is of the gravitational field pulling on it. The weight of the
Earth due to the gravitational field produced by my body is well over
1100 Newtons (I'm generating a much stronger gravitational field than is
in the best interests of my health).

The quantity you were given was incorrectly described, it was probably
actually the mass of the earth - I'm not going to bother to verify if
the number you gave is correct.

 

[Dik T. Winter]

> I was talking about C. Fortran provides Visual Basic's by reference
> call but as a default, and here you don't get the address.

Wrong. The Fortran standard allows call by reference and call by value-return,
a valid Fortran program is not able to tell the difference. If I remember
right, some IBM Fortran compilers used call by value-return.

 

[James Kuyper]

Nick Keighley said:



So do I. Nevertheless, this stuff is taught in what I think of as
first-year Physics. I think they call it "seventh grade" across the
Pond, but I might be a grade or or two out.

Eighth grade, for me.

... Anyway, the point is that
nobody who went through a reasonably modern formal educational
process has an excuse for not knowing it.

Do they need an excuse? Most students forget such esoteric facts shortly
after the final exam. It's mainly the ones who actually end up using
those facts that really remember them for any length of time.

 

[James Kuyper]

Richard Heathfield wrote:
....

frequent this group. You can do all the C tests you like, but it is
here that you will learn precisely what is wrong with those tests and
precisely why.

Given previous experience with the guy, isn't is a tad optimistic to
assume that he will ever learn anything?

 

[Dik T. Winter]

> Nick Keighley said: ....
>
> I bet if weighing scales were labelled in Newton, they'd find out soon
> enough.

I bet that the weights and measures act does not allow that.

 

[Nick Keighley]

James Kuyper said:





That's an excellent case for introducing correct units on scales
immediately, as they would then come into everyday use for many
(most?) people.

but I use a balance with "weights". My kitchen scales would work on
the moon.
I even have metric and imperial[1] weights. I think a set labelled in
Newtons would be... misleading.

[1] recipes with units like "oz" confused an Estonian friend

 

[Dennis \(Icarus\)]

Dennis (Icarus) wrote:

Which does not mean that the author of the test was right. In fact, I
believe it is likely that the author of the test was simply not aware of
the issue at all (i.e. was not aware it is reserved for use by the
implementation).

More likely, the author was merely testing student's knoweldge of what
tokens can be use in a variable name - regardless where it comes from.
I recall that a valid variable name it's an alphanumeric or underscore,
followed by alphanumeric or underscore, and cannot be a keyword (either from
the standard or implementation).

Note that I'm not the only one who considered it to be an issue with the
test.

Note that I'm not the only one who considerd it to be a valid identifier.
This isn't a decmocracy though.

Dennis