Re: In CVS Emacs, calc-eval gives multiplication higher precidence than division

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Randal L. Schwartz wrote:
> That's crazy.
> 
> That's (2b)/(5d), according to any math teacher I knew from school.
> 
> That's the only sane parsing of that.
> 
> Now, replace 2 with "a" and 5 with "c", and you get:
> 
>   ab/cd
> 
> which is (ab)/(cd).
> 
> That's what I mean. This is the *mathematical* evaluation.  In this case,
> division *is* lower precedence than multiplication.

I am afraid I think you misunderstand this issue. We are talking about

  a * b / c * d

But thanks, maybe I can understand a bit better why some people believe
that these precedence rules exists now. Indeed, as you pointed out "2b"
is often interpreted as "2 * b" and that might give the impression that
there is a precedence rule for * and / that says * has higher precedence.

But there is no such rule. It is about different notations instead.

You have to be more careful when translating notations. The notation
translation is rather

  2b / 5d => (2 * b) / (5 * d)