Matlab uses A\B to “divide with A from the left” (where A and B are matrices).

Would it look weird to use \ for left divide in Racket?

Or would mldivide be better (the name Matlab uses as an alternative).

I think a name is better

One thing that drives me crazy about Scala is a symbol for which I don’t remember the meaning, and Google thinks the symbol is too wonky even for them.

Matlab has (for the same reason I guess) a single page with all operators listed. They have a few…

So if (mldivide A B) is “left divide with A” should “right divide with A” be (mrdivide B A) ?

In Matlab it is: A\B vs B/A.

what’s the difference between left division and right division? (I spaced out through most of my linear algebra class…)

ah I see: A/B is A * inverse(B), but A\B is inverse(A) * B

Exactly. I can’t remember that phrase either, so it might be non-standard.

@soegaard2 I thought about it more, and I think the way I would phrase the two concepts is “A divided by B” (A/B) and “A divided into B” (A\B). With an OOP-y syntax, I’d write A/B as matrix.divideBy(divisor) and A\B as matrix.divideInto(dividend). So for Racket, maybe (matrix-divide-by matrix divisor) and (matrix-divide-into matrix dividend)?

that asks users to remember that grammatically, “divide” is a verb, the subject is the divisor, and the object is the dividend, which seems slightly less arbitrary than “left” and “right”

Probably best to be careful to use precise linear algebra terms here though, not sure divided into is one of them (maybe?)

well that sent me down a wikipedia rabbit hole, and I’ve emerged from it believing that the precise mathematical and linguistic terminology is that “divide into” is a monotransitive phrasal verb