Consider ternary operations

[the4thamigo-uk]

In a system of operations on quantities, there might be common operations on more than two quantities e.g. A,B,C.

You break down this into two binary operations (e.g. ABC = A*(BC)), but in some cases the result of one of the operations (e.g. the operation BC), could be a scalar. This requires that A must have binary operation defined with a scalar, in order to complete the calculation :

Scalar = B*C;
A = A * Scalar;

Having operations on quantities with scalars is dangerous for the programmer, as there is less control over what is being passed into the operator. In some cases, if A,B,C might only ever be expected to be used in a ternary multiplication, then it would be safer to allow the definition of such operations in the configuration file :

A = ABC;

This avoids the 'dangerous' scalar multiplication operator.