this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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[–] ReveredOxygen 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The problem is the /. Usually you'd use a fraction bar, which groups it and makes it unambiguous

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

There are plenty of contexts where writing in a single flat line is necessary, so it's still useful to address the issue.

Just using more brackets is always a solution, but it can become messy and hard to read if you take it to the extreme (there's a Minute Physics video where he does this and it unintentionally shows you just how bad it is), so it eventually becomes a matter of agreeing on convention and using brackets judicially where there's actual ambiguity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Usually you’d use a fraction bar, which groups it and makes it unambiguous

Division (operator) and fraction bar (grouping symbol) aren't the same. It already is unambiguous.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

Even then, the implicit multiplication already removes some of the ambiguity. 2(2+2) should be on the same side of the fraction, otherwise you'd have 8(2+2). However, if you had 8 / 2 * (2+2) then it would be treated as 8(2+2) / 2.