I'm designing a programming language, and I need some guidance on syntax.

Not that it's really a problem for anyone that has faced this syntactic issue before, but I see a wild amount of confusion stemming from the use of the caret (^) as the XOR operation in lieu of the widely accepted mathematical exponentiation operation.

Of course there are a lot of places where the (mis-)use of the caret is explained and corrected, but I haven't come across any definitive sources as to why the caret was given a different meaning.

Was it a matter of convenience? An accident? Obviously the reasoning could be different for the various languages, so information in any regard would be insightful.

Not that it's really a problem for anyone that has faced this syntactic issue before, but I see a wild amount of confusion stemming from the use of the caret (^) as the XOR operation in lieu of the widely accepted mathematical exponentiation operation.

Of course there are a lot of places where the (mis-)use of the caret is explained and corrected, but I haven't come across any definitive sources as to why the caret was given a different meaning.

Was it a matter of convenience? An accident? Obviously the reasoning could be different for the various languages, so information in any regard would be insightful.

Not that it's really a problem for anyone that has faced this syntactic issue before, but I see a wild amount of confusion stemming from the use of the caret (^) as the XOR operation in lieu of the widely accepted mathematical exponentiation operation.

Of course there are a lot of places where the (mis-)use of the caret is explained and corrected, but I haven't come across any definitive sources as to why the caret was given a different meaning.

Was it a matter of convenience? An accident? Obviously the reasoning could be different for the various languages, so information in any regard would be insightful.

I'm designing a programming language, and I need some guidance on syntax.

Not that it's really a problem for anyone that has faced this syntactic issue before, but I see a wild amount of confusion stemming from the use of the caret (^) as the XOR operation in lieu of the widely accepted mathematical exponentiation operation.

Of course there are a lot of places where the (mis-)use of the caret is explained and corrected, but I haven't come across any definitive sources as to why the caret was given a different meaning.

Was it a matter of convenience? An accident? Obviously the reasoning could be different for the various languages, so information in any regard would be insightful.