Friday, May 1, 2009

"Hello World" for Numerics

I'm taking a serious look at Scala, and liking what I see very much. It struck me that I have my own version of the standard Hello World program. I recognize, of course, that getting a program to print "Hello World" is not about testing I/O, but instead seeing that you can get a program running at all. Nonetheless, the first test I always make is a different one, that tells me something vital.

I do this:
[~ 479] scala
Welcome to Scala version 2.7.3.final (Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM, Java 1.5.0_16).
Type in expressions to have them evaluated.
Type :help for more information.

scala> 1 + 2*3
res0: Int = 7


If 1+2*3 returns a value other than 7, I automatically reject the language. For completeness, I also check 2*3+1. What programming I do is normally math-intensive enough that I refuse to deal with languages that can't handle normal precedence rules.

Prefix languages like the Lisp family pass this test, as they won't return a value. I've not worked with postfix languages like Forth, but I think they'd pass, too.

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