gupta@prlhp1.prl.philips.co.uk (Ashok Gupta) (02/06/90)
I'm having a recurring problem with understanding sentences containing either of the following two words :- "canonical" and "monotonic". From Comms of the ACM, vol 29, no 5, May 1986, in Programming Pearls by Jon Bently, D. Knuth has a section on a literate program, (pg 367) :- I quote :- "An ordered hash table is a canonical representation of its set of entries" and "The hash address [H=2M(T-1)/N], is used as a starting point since this quantity is monotonic in T ..." I'm not going to submit my translation of what he may be trying to say. What do you think he's saying ? *PLEASE EMAIL TO ME AS I DO NOT READ THIS NEWSGROUP.* I'll post a summary if there's any interest.