Konrad, > Thanks, I'll look at that...
I should warn that my changes don't quite seem to be working, there's something running amuck in the code yet that I'm still working on debugging, but the core is a bit mystifying. > > Also, it seems more elegant to me to be able to simply write a complex > > number in a "natural" way i.e. 5+3i. I didn't see a way to do that > > without modifying clojure core > > No. But I wonder if "5+3i" is very natural for a language that doesn't > have infix arithmetic. This notation is just a sum of a real and an > imaginary number, so in Clojure I'd expect to see (+ 5 3i) instead. Konrad, I see your point, but it seems that Rich has chosen a less "lisp purist" perspective on this. Please consider the following examples: (class (/ 3 4)) ; legal (class 3/4) ; legal (class 3 / 4) ; illegal (class 3/ 4) ; illegal (class 3 /4) ; illegal (class 1.234e+14) ; legal (class 1.234e-14) ; legal (class 1.234 e-14) ; illegal (class 1.234e -14) ; illegal (class 1.234 e -14) ; illegal It seems to be that Rich has the perspective that a Ratio's toString() output is also valid input as well, even though this appears to be an infix notated '/'. What I'm proposing is that a number ending with 'i' is imaginary or complex, and that a '+' with no spaces may be used to define a complex I think the "3+5i" form makes more sense *because* there isn't infix notation in the language. Please also consider the example of an exponentiated double. It's permissible to have a '+' or a '-' in the middle of that number, but it isn't to be confused with an infixed '+' operation. > What trouble? I need to reinvestigate what the trouble was. Maybe it was in the complexity of parsing, or simply because Rich used BigInteger in Ratio. I'll get back to you on that one! > Perhaps a good compromise would be to have a thin Clojure wrapper > around a good Java library. This is what I was thinking too. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
