Stavros,
> Are you sure about the consequences of the Fortran 77 rules?
Well, http://fortran.com/F77_std/rjcnf-6.html seems clear enough,
although there is no guarantee that all compiler writers (or users)
will agree on the interpretation ....
> What are the values of the following expressions in Fortran 77?
>
> 2.0^2*3
> 2.0^-2*3
> 2.0^(-2*3)
> 2.0^(-2)*3
> 2.0^-(2)*3
> 2.0^2-3
g77 (part of gcc) yields the following (same as what Ray stated
in another message).
12.
0.015625
0.015625
0.75
0.015625
1.
g77 has an option -Wsurprising which prints out warning messages
for expressions such as the above.
(But note that the description of -Wsurprising as shown by info g77
is confused about the actual behavior of the program.)
By the way, this business with operator precedence bears on at
least one reported bug, which has to do with the value of 1/+3*2
(or something like that). At present Maxima says that is 1/6,
which consistent with F77. That is a consequence of the right
binding power for + , which is 100 (i.e. less than * ).
We could resolve that bug by approving the current behavior,
and changing rbp of - to be 100 also, for consistency. Just a thought.
All the best
Robert