Re: [PATCH] pass constants as first argument to st_mult()

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

On Wed, Aug 03, 2016 at 12:41:30PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 12:13 PM, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Mon, Aug 01, 2016 at 03:31:45PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

I think in my head I rewrite any multiplication like "N of M" as having
"N" as the smaller number. I.e., it is conceptually simpler to me to
count five 30's, then 30 five's (even though I do not implement it in my
head as a sequence of additions, of course; I'd probably do that
particular case as "half of ten 30's").

I have no idea if that's cultural or not, though.

Now, when you say "count five 30's", which one do you have
in mind? 5x30, or 30x5?

If you meant the former, I think that _is_ cultural. I am pretty
sure that I was taught in school(s) to read 5x30 as adding 5
thirty times.

I think I would say "30x5" in that case. But I'm not sure where that
comes from, and I'm not even 100% sure that I would say that (after
thinking about it, it's hard for me to figure out what I would have done
if I _hadn't_ just thought about it).

By the way, reading "30x5" as "count five 30's" disagrees with
calloc(nmemb=5, size=30), which wants to add 30-byte necessary for
each member 5 times to allocate 150 bytes.

Anyway, this tangent is long enough ;-)