Re: ABNF, and miscellany

> No, there are other problems that were mentioned on rfc-interest
> but not subsequently; e.g. the unused
>   3*5[foo]
> construct.  After some thought, you may realize that that's
> equivalent to *5foo (i.e. the first number is meaningless -- it
> could be anything, and the brackets as well).  Normally when
> advancing a specification to Draft status, unused features are
> removed -- they tend to result in interoperability problems and
> are a ripe source of security exploits.  

Excellent point.  For that matter, it seems like some changes to
mathematical notation are long overdue.  For instance, in the
construct

[0 * (foo + bar)] 

the whole (foo + bar) expression is irrelevant.  It should be 
forbidden to write such constructs.   And yet this bug has been
allowed to persist for several centuries!  Surely this has resulted
in massive failures in engineering and economics, and widespread
misunderstanding in science.

Don't even get me started about dividing by zero, roots of 
negative numbers, etc.  These are products of deranged minds.