[texhax] Defining a command which runs differently based ion input argument

[Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

When I was at the Borough Polytechnic some forty years
ago, we were taught (by David Singmaster, he of Rubic's
cube fame) that the optima radix for computer operations
was the exponential e.  At that time, no-one had succeeded
in building such a computer : has that situation changed
since then, does anyone know ?

** Phil.
--------
Uwe Lueck wrote:

> "Reinhard Kotucha"<reinhard.kotucha at web.de>, 30.12.2010 02:39:15:

>> On 29 December 2010 Uwe Lueck wrote:

>>> Less seriously, with *ternary* computers, we might have
>>> 27 category codes instead of only 16 ...
>>
>> Actually, 3^4=81.
>
> Yes, and 28/7=4 :-)
>
>> From a ternary point of view, 4 is an odd number.
> 3^3 is beautiful, 3^4 is strange. 3^3 is sufficient,
> while the binary analogue 2^2 is not.
> 2^4 turned out to be sufficient,
> but from a binary point of view it is not as beautiful
> as 3^3 is from the ternary point of view.
>
> Cheers,
>
>      Uwe.