There is an ancient tradition in mathematics to place an operator between the operands (x + y)
rather than after
the operands xy+
. Form with an operator between operands is called infix notation. The form with an operator
after the operands is called postfix, or Reverse Polish notation. It has a number of advantages over infix
notation when expressing algebraic formulas:
- Any formula can be expressed without parentheses.
- It is convenient for calculating formulas on stacked machines.
- Infix operators have precedence that is arbitrary and undesirable.