|Perl: the Markov chain saw|
Re^5: Numification of stringsby LanX (Chancellor)
|on Aug 03, 2010 at 13:50 UTC||Need Help??|
My wording was bad, I meant that the break of symmetry of '++' and '+1' "lowers the orthogonality" of the language.
This comment from a Java board reflects my understanding of orthogonal:
Orthogonality is a boolean property. You have it or you don't. It is not a number or count. ...
And if features of the concept of addition are not parallel, the product of the features becomes "less" Cartesian, i.e. one gets "more exceptions from the rule". That's my personal definition of "lowering orthogonality".
UPDATE: to be more explicit:
in perl lingo you might say ++ has special magic!