ln() vs. log()

[Dieter]

(04-24-2016 02:38 PM)Marcus von Cube Wrote:  

(04-17-2016 10:06 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  Interestingly, the original Dartmouth BASIC had log() but it was really ln().

In Casio BASIC as implemented on their pocket computers there were two variants:

LN and LOG for the FX series (e. g. FX-850)
LOG and LGT for the newer PB series (e. g. PB-1000 but not the older PB-100)

I never understood why there is no common unambigous declaration of the logarithm function(s). In most programming languages, "log" returns the natural logarithm ln(x) while on most calculators this is correctly called "ln". Here, "log" usually is the base-10 logarithm, i.e. lg(x). Excel is a special case: in a worksheet log is the base-10 logarithm, while in a VBA function it's ln(x). #-) As far as I can see the WP34s is the only calculator that uses correct designations: ln, lg, ld and finally log_xy for a base-x logarithm.

(04-24-2016 02:38 PM)Marcus von Cube Wrote:  I had a hard time writing my BASIC to WAV translators (CASette I/O Utilities) in a way to handle both variants correctly.

?!? – what exactly was the problem?

Dieter