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rzach / forallx-yyc

UCalgary version of forallx, an introduction to formal logic
https://forallx.openlogicproject.org/
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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Make a passing reference to a hypothetical postfix notation as an alternative to bracketing? #75

Closed kedarmhaswade closed 1 year ago

kedarmhaswade commented 1 year ago

I haven't researched the literature to establish if postfix notation has been tried on TFL sentences. I have written about it here.

Summarily:

Compare, for instance, ๐’œโ„ฌ๐’žโˆงโˆจ with ๐’œโˆจ(โ„ฌโˆง๐’ž). We can prove that the postfix notation can create unambiguous TFL Sentences (see below), but whether they will be readable is difficult to determine; it may also be subjective. Sometimes, however, I fancy thinking that postfix notation may serve the TFL Sentences well, once you get used to it.

Is it a good idea to make a passing reference to such a notation in TFL (ยง 6.3)?

rzach commented 1 year ago

I think it would be bit tangential and possibly confusing in the main text. It is mentioned at the end of appendix A ("Polish notation")

kedarmhaswade commented 1 year ago

Wow! Thank you for drawing my attention to the appendix A. I had missed that. OTOH, it feels good that I had that thought without referring to the appendix :-).

I respect your decision to not even mention appendix A in the main text (section 6.3), but I don't think it is tangential. It is very much related to the need of bracketing to disambiguate a sentence. Another benefit of such a reference would be to avoid the creation of an issue like this one!