Macaulay2 / Macaulay2/M2

"^" on numbers should be right-associative

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Dominant language
Macaulay2
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

According this document the operator ^ is left associative. I don't know about the other overloaded types, but for numbers it should be right associative. The following is wrong

i1 : 3^3^3
o1 = 19683

The correct answer is

i2 : 3^27
o2 = 7625597484987

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating Macaulay2's parser or operator-precedence implementation for ^, then check how associativity is tested. Use the issue's 3^3^3 examples as the expected behavior: numeric exponentiation should evaluate as 3^(3^3) while the effect on other overloaded types remains to be verified.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
compilers
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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