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To: Kris Craig <kris.craig@gmail.com>, Daniel Lowrey <rdlowrey@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: power operator (again)
From: rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus Lerdorf)

On 12/19/2013 04:50 PM, Kris Craig wrote:
> I believe that, especially for a KISS language like PHP, our top priority
> with math operators should be to match arithmetic laws as closely and as
> intuitively as possible.  The average PHP developer is going to do -3 ** 2
> and expect a result of 9, not -9, and rightly so I think.

No, the average PHP developer is going to do $var ** 2 and it will
behave exactly as they expect with negative values. Yes, in the very
rare case that someone for some reason hardcodes a negative literal
there, they are going to have to learn about operator precedence because
we really can't have 0 - 3**2 be different from - 3**2.

-Rasmus