It is rare to find any two areas of work U and V for which UV = 0.  They
usually both have some non-zero components on some dimension.  I believe
that people use "orthogonal" loosely here to mean that |TC| < epsilon,
where epsilon is some arbitrarily assigned small value.

--

__________________________________________________________
Fight spam now!
Get your free anti-spam service: http://www.brightmail.com
--

You may find probability terminology a help: 2 random variables are
orthogonal if their covariance vanishes.  For finite probability
spaces, this implies that they're independent.  That is, "one has no
effect on the other".

This is often considered a Good Thing -- it means you can get away
with understanding A and B separately, without needing to understand
A+B.

--

Compugen Ltd.          |Tel: +972-2-6795059 (Jerusalem) \  NEW IMPROVED URL!
72 Pinhas Rosen St.    |Tel: +972-3-7658520 (Main office)`--------------------
Tel-Aviv 69512, ISRAEL |Fax: +972-3-7658555  http://3w.compugen.co.il/~ariels
--

Francis Glassborow      Journal Editor, Association of C & C++ Users
64 Southfield Rd
Oxford OX4 1PA          +44(0)1865 246490
All opinions are mine and do not represent those of any organisation
--

   Orthogonal in reference to a comp lang. Well, I've read this
   for quit a while and finally cracked a dictionary and got
   stuff like:
   * mutually perpendicular
   * statistically independent
   *blank stare - low background buzzzz*
   Could someone define orthogonal in reference to a comp lang so
   even I might understand it.

It might be best if you'd give us the context in which this term was
used.  Did it just say `C is orthogonal' or was there more?
--
"...dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral
 pour encourager les autres."
--Voltaire, _Candide_
--

 MD> Could someone define orthogonal in reference to a comp lang so even
 MD> I might understand it.

:orthogonal: [from mathematics] adj. Mutually independent; well
   separated; sometimes, irrelevant to.  Used in a generalization of
   its mathematical meaning to describe sets of primitives or
   capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span the
   entire `capability space' of the system and are in some sense
   non-overlapping or mutually independent.  For example, in
   architectures such as the PDP-11 or VAX where all or nearly all
   registers can be used interchangeably in any role with respect to
   any instruction, the register set is said to be orthogonal.  Or, in
   logic, the set of operators `not' and `or' is orthogonal,
   but the set `nand', `or', and `not' is not (because any
   one of these can be expressed in terms of the others).  Also used
   in comments on human discourse: "This may be orthogonal to the
   discussion, but...."

greetings,
Tom

--

Examples might help the most.

C operators and types are orthogonal.  Any combination of the
operators ++, +, -, * works with with any of the types char, int,
float.  It would not be orthogonal if + were restricted to int.

The 68K register set is orthogonal in that all the address registers
A0-A7 work with all instructions and addressing modes.  The x86 is not
orthogonal since many of the CPU registers are restricted to certain
tasks.

As I remember, the VMS command line interface is orthogonal since
the command flags are consistent across commands.

The UNIX commands are not orthogonal, since the flags vary with the
command.  rm -i means inquire before executing the command, while
rmdir does not accept -i.
--

--