-10^2

[tom farrell]

Hi Richard et al...

>   You can force a specific order of operator precedence

Yes, I understand. But I shouldn't have to use () if I want 4*2+5 to yield 13.

My apologies if this is off-topic, but I don't think -10^2 is 
ambiguous. Excel gets it wrong. Appleworks gets it right.

Sadly, and based on complete ignorance alone, I assume that even if 
the the authors of, eg, OpenOffice or StarOffice know that Excel gets 
it wrong, they have made their products get it wrong also, for the 
sake of import/export consistency.

What about Revolution?

tom

>>  The expression:
>>  -10^2
>>  should evaluate to -100, not 100, because it means "the opposite of
>>  ten squared", not "negative 10, squared".
>>
>>  But if I put the expression in the message box, it evaluates to 100.
>>  Is this done on purpose?
>
>You can force a specific order of operator precedence with parens:
>
>   -(10^2)
-- 
+---------------------------------------+
   tom farrell      <thf at pvs.k12.nm.us>
   pojoaque valley schools
   santa fe   nm   87501
   "Beauty is in the i of the Beholder"
                     (Julia Mandelbrot)