Keyword message associativity.

rvclayton at acm.org rvclayton at acm.org
Sun Jul 22 17:17:38 UTC 2018


The self 2017.1 handbook interprets the expression

  5 min: 6 min: 7 Max: 8 Max: 9 min: 10 Max: 11

as

  5 min: (6 min: 7 Max: 8 Max: (9 min: 10 Max: 11))

(pgs 17-18) for the message min:Max.  This strikes me as wrong - where's the
Max: part for the message sent to 5?  It seems to me that the interpretation
should be

  5 min: (6 min: 7 Max: 8) Max: (9 min: 10 Max: 11)

or, to use indentation

  5 min:
      6 min:
          7
	Max:
	  8
    Max:
      9 min:
          10
        Max:
	  11

I understand that one likes to see a pleasing pile-up of parentheses at the end
of right-associative expressions, so maybe the example could be

  5 min: 6 Max: 7 min: 8 Max: 9 min: 10 Max: 11 min: 12 Max: 13

which equivalent to (if I'm understanding things correctly)

  5 min: 6 Max: (7 min: 8 Max: (9 min: 10 Max: (11 min: 12 Max: 13)))




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