semantics of ** (unexpected/inconsistent?)

[Lie Ryan]

On 11/30/2009 12:38 PM, Esmail wrote:
> Thanks all!! I get it now :-)
>
> It helped to have a number of different explanations, thanks
> for taking the time to post. Much appreciated.

I generally do not expect operator precedence to be reliable at all 
except for:

+ - (binary ops, not the unary)
* /
**

for other operators I would have explicit parens. It's too much work to 
remember the rest of the precedence sheet.