Re: [office-formula] Constraints and infix ^

["Andreas J. Guelzow" <aguelzow@math.concordia.ab.ca>]

On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 19:00 -0500, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> 0^0 is actually an interesting (and complicated) case.
> 
> Traditional mathematics 

I am not sure what this traditional mathematics is. Most set theory text
are probably going to say that it is 1 since there is a single function
from the empty set to the empty set. 

I am not sure that this is what the typical spread sheet user has been
taught.

> says that it should be "1" by definition, but "0" is a conceptually plausible answer.   An Error is obviously plausible, because of this.  Yet "^" is a function, and thus, should return at most one answer. 
> 
> The question is, what should the _specification_ say?

Indeed. I just think that what the current draft says:

Implementations shall compute 0^0 as one of 0, 1, or an Error, but it is
implementation-defined which of these options is the result.

may not be the most useful. 

In any case, why do we have portable condtraints (sic) and Constraints
for that that are the same? Given the Constraints 0^0 should violate the
constraints anyways and so give an error...

Andreas






> 

-- 
Andreas J. Guelzow <aguelzow@math.concordia.ab.ca>
Concordia University College of Alberta