Friday, February 02, 2007

Matchfix: the obscure buddy of prefix and postfix

The title on this post says it all. This week I learned there is actually a name, "matchfix", for an operator that is called like a function. To put this in its familiar context, here's a summary of the ways a two-argument operator can be called:


prefix
op arg1 arg2

postfix
arg1 arg2 op (also known as Reverse Polish Notation)

infix
arg1 op arg2

matchfix
op(arg1,arg2)


For reference, see the Google search 'matchfix -cricket -horse'.

It looks like the origins of "matchfix" may come from MACSYMA, the computer algebra system.

Now if the language you're designing or describing has a way to invoke operators like ordinary function calls, you know the term.

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