Client Language Help

(this text by Steven DeHaven, Calgary, and Christian Gottschall, Vienna)

This help does not explain the applet or the functions it performs. If you need help with them go to Help with Applet. The sole purpose of this text is to explain the formal language understood by the client-side functions.

Propositional variables are upper-case letters, i.e. "A"…"Z", optionally followed by digits, e.g. "A", "B12"
The negation may be expressed by one of the strings "~", or "not", leading to propositions like "~A" or "not P42".
The conjunction may be expressed by one of the strings "&", "^", "and", leading to propositions like "~P1 & Z10" or "~A and B".
The disjunction may be expressed by one of the strings "v" (the lower-case letter V), "|" or "or", leading to propositions like "~P1 v Z10", "~(~P1 & Z10) | ~Prop3" or "~A or B".
The conditional may be expressed by one of the strings "->", "=>", leading to propositions like "~P1 -> Z10" or "not (~P1 & Z10) => P4".
The biconditional may be expressed by one of the strings "<->", "<=>", "iff", leading to propositions like "~P1 <-> Z10", "(~P1 & Z10) <=> A" or "~A iff B".
NAND, NOR, and XOR may be expressed by the string "nand", "nor", and "xor", respectively.
Brackets may be used as needed.
You may omit brackets in which case the applet evaluates (from left to right) negations, conjunctions, disjunctions, conditionals and biconditionals. If you are unsure what this means or if you want to be in total control of everything, you should try to use brackets.