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Comment by yread | Hacker News Reader

We discussed this article in the office and among other things we found that even today the notation for division (when calculating it by hand) varies wildly:

In Czech Republic we would write

453: 12 = 37.75

In Netherlands:

12/453\37.75

In Russia:

       453 | 12
           | 37.75

all of them are listed on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_division

View on HN

      123 ÷ 4/5 + 6 | 7 x 8

    = 123 ÷ 0.8 + 6 | 56

    =    153.75 + 6 | 56

    =        159.75 | 56

    = 2.85267 857142 857142 857142 857142 857142 857142 857142 857142 857142...

i.e. here | acts as a low precedence division operator, ÷ as an ordinary precedence division operator like infix / and the 'closefix' rational notation 3/4 has the highest precedence in my programming language

n.b. in case you were wondering P v Q is used for Boolean Or.

In India its usually written: 500 ÷ 4 = 125. Its not a + sign, it a bar stuck between a :

That's normal division, which is a notation. The GP is talking about long division, which is a technique used to divide large numbers.

The symbol in Australia (and I'd say most of the English speaking world) looks like a long square root sign with a curved vertical part:

  _______

12)12345

That's also very much the standard in Britain.

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