LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Reverse Polish Notation: Operands
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Reverse Polish Notation is a notation in which the operators follow the operands (postfix operators). Hewlett-Packard calculators support this for data entry which makes complex calculations a lot easier to do. But why is this called Reverse "Polish" Notation? Where does Poland come into this? So-called Polish Notation (using prefix operators as in Lisp) was invented in the 1920's by Polish mathematician Jan Lukasiewicz. In the 1950s, Charles L. Hamblin proposed a scheme in which operators followed operands.
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Reverse Polish notation provided a straightforward solution for calculator or computer software mathematics because it treats the instructions (operators) and the data (operands) as "objects" and processes them in a last-in, first-out (LIFO) basis. This is called a "stack method". (Think of a stack of plates. The last plate you put on the stack will be the first plate taken off the stack.)
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Polish notation was described in the 1920s by Polish mathematician Jan Lukasiewicz as a logical system for the specification of mathematical equations without parentheses. There are two versions, prefix notation and postfix notation. In prefix notation, the operators are placed before the operand. In postfix notation, this order is reversed. The following example illustrates the two. The asterisk is used for the multiplication sign.
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Polish notation... known as prefix notation, is a symbolic logic invented by Polish mathematician Jan Lukasiewicz in the 1920's. When using Polish notation, the instruction (operation) precedes the data (operands). In Polish notation, the order (and only the order) of operations and operands determines the result, making parentheses unnecessary.
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For this lab, you will create a program that uses a stack to evaluate reverse Polish expressions. If you have ever worked with a Hewlett-Packard calculator, you have already seen reverse Polish notation. Under this notation, operators appear after their operands in an expression. For example, the following expression adds the numbers 3 and 5:
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