On Nov 23, 8:56 am, Rock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Nov 23, 2:37 pm, André Thieme <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > On 23 Nov., 13:29, Rock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > > I've just noticed there is no support for complex numbers in Clojure.
> > > There are a few posts on the issue here, but no rationale. I'm a
> > > mathematician, and complex numbers pop up all over the place. CL and
> > > Scheme have always had native support for them. I took it for granted
> > > they were there until I needed them recently.
>
> > I think the reason is, that Java still does not have them in its
> > standard lib. It puzzles my why they didn’t come up with
> > something in the past 13 years.
> > If you want them you will have to use some lib for that.
>
> Yes, I see, but the JVM hasn't got native support for rational numbers
> either, and yet we do have them in Clojure thanks to the Ratio class
> Rich created. I can't see why something analogous can't be done for
> complex numbers as well. We even have unbound integers! And you don't
> have them in Java natively. Maybe, for the time being, some Complex
> class like the ones found in Apache.Commons or in JScience could be
> incorporated into Clojure, so that we have a common basis to work on,
> and there would be compatibility among different people's code
> (somthing important I believe).
I have nothing against complex numbers, and interested parties should
contribute to this discussion on how best to incorporate them in
Clojure. The issues are:
What support is required?
How hard to do with no other libs, a la Ratio?
If a 3rd-party lib is required, which one, what's the license, how to
make it optional, how well does it fit with Clojure's immutability
requirements, etc.
I'm amenable to a patch after consensus, but it's not something I have
time to do myself.
Rich
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