On Mon, 2 Feb 2026 22:00:37 GMT, Joe Darcy <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Good that we are encapsulating degree with methods; might add a comment to > > indicate this intention, like no direct access for lazy fields. > > Also, I noted we use (`this.`)`coeffs.length` a lot. How is it distinct > > from `deg()`? Hope we can clarify on that as well. > > Otherwise, looks nice in concept. > > The notion of "degree" is a polynomial concept while the length of the > backing array is an implementation artifact. With this data structure; degree > is _almost_ length - 1. The exception is a zero polynomial, which needs > special handling somehow since its degree is defined to not be 0 -- as would > be the case for any other constant polynomial -- but -1 (or sometimes > -infinity). > > Writing this comment, this might tip my scales to internally use an empty > array to special case zero. That way, the degree would be one less than the > length is all cases. Refactoring pushed; I'll go over this again on my own, but will likely push a variation of this later today. Thanks for the helpful discussions. ------------- PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/valhalla/pull/2004#issuecomment-3837661374
