ok@goanna.oz.au (Richard O'keefe) (02/22/90)
I was recently taken to task for using the phrase "occurS check" for the test made in unification to see whether a given variable occurs in a given term. Fair enough, grammatical English would be "occurrence check", but it seems that the more popular phrase is "occur check" (which affects me like fingernails on a black- board). Can anyone tell me who introduced the phrase "occur/occurs check" and in what paper? It _wasn't_ Robinson 1965, I checked.
dnk@sendai.cs.mu.OZ.AU (David Kinny) (02/22/90)
Jean-Louis Lassez used to pronounce this as "ocker check". It took me half a lecture to realise that this wasn't just another Gallic joke aimed at his Australian audience.