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Subject:Re: idempotent From:Simon North <north -at- SYNOPSYS -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 19 Aug 1999 11:41:26 +0200
Sybille,
The technical explanation is this:
Idempotent law: The law satisfied by any binary (dyadic) operation
'op' for which
x op x = x
for all elements x in the domain of 'op'.
The non-technical explanation is that performing the operation on
itself results in a null operation (like inverting an image twice).
While I think the product specialist knew what she was talking
about, I'd personally hesitate to use the term here. It is only very
loosely in context here (the term is far more suited to discussing
boolean logic and set operations in mathematics), and I would
therefore try and find some way to paraphrase the sense. I think it
would be a challenge to do it without using too many words though!
Simon.
Simon J North BA(Hons) Eng Tech(CEI) FISTC ARAeS TMIEIE MIPRE
Senior Staff Technical Writer, Synopsys GmbH, Herzogenrath, Germany
