When is a cast not a cast?

[Blair P. Houghton]

In article <13189 at haddock.ima.isc.com> karl at haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes:
>(This is not a flame.  If this continues to the point where I feel compelled
>to flame, you'll recognize it as such.)

Sorry, you're way behind in the flame department.  Lets keep this one on
a metaphysical level and let the rationalists act like four-year-olds
(I like playing with kids, you know.  You can go down to their level with
all the confidence that you can come back up to your own.  Makes it easy
to deal with the self-professed 'compiler-writers' on the net.)

>This is a lot like talking to the platygaeanists in talk.origins.  It's hard
>to refute you without knowing what you already accept.

True, you need clairvoyance.  Well, it just makes this drag out a little more.

>Blair, do you understand that, even though one commonly represents both points
>and vectors as n-tuples of numbers, that they are conceptually different?  Do
>you accept the (common and useful) laws of arithmetic for points and vectors?

Common and useful aren't necessarily complete and all-powerful.

>(A point has a position; a vector has a magnitude and direction.  Adding or
>subtracting vectors gives you another vector.  Adding a vector to a point
>gives you another point.  Subtracting two points gives you a vector.)

Throw in the rest of multidimensional mathematics.  Add an accounting
for the age of the point (i.e., time) and maybe, to extend the idea,
add another for its political affiliation (in the US this is a
perturbed binary value :) Disturbs your sense of vectors a bit, eh?  It
does throw off the matrix operations to have to deal with objects not
all of the same dimensionality, but then you partition the problem to
the point where there is no interaction between dissimilarly-typed
objects except by multiplication, and you have something more familiar.

>Does it bother you that when you multiply two lengths, you get an area rather
>than another length?

Does it bother you that when I add two character pointers, I get yet another
character pointer?

>Or that the ratio of two lengths is dimensionless?
>Pointers are additive rather than multiplicative, but the principle is the
>same.

Could it be that adding pointers creates different things, as multiplying
lengths creates areas?  Maybe.

If I could get these bigbrain-hopefuls off the "that's exactly the way it
isn't" bandwagon and onto a train of "lemme think about this a minute",
then we'd have something.  Unfortunately, they want to waste their time
telling me I'm unglaublich for being unglaublich, and they get my best
verschimmelt act for their efforts.

				--Blair
				  "Ciao, babe."