On 16/04/2012 12:42, Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
<snip>
Do you feel the SETI Institute should have given up years ago?
I don't really see the similarity between SETI and Phobos.
They've been working for decades in the hope of finding aliens. In the same way,
imaginary types have been put into D in the hope that they would be useful. To leap to
the conclusion that they aren't useful, just because they haven't been put to any real use
_yet_, would be like SETI leaping to the conclusion that aliens don't exist and therefore
abandoning the project.
<snip>
This doesn't cover the case of multiplying a complex number by an imaginary
number. In
the absence of imaginary types, one would have to use complex(-z.im * k, z.re *
k), just
because z * complex(0, k) isn't guaranteed to produce the correct result.
Seems a bit silly. Or have you another suggestion for dealing with this?
Yes: Define Complex!T so it produces the desired result in each case.
<snip>
You mean define complex multiplication and division with a special case so that, when ±0
occurs as the real part of a number, it just pretends there's no real part at all? I can
see this slowing down almost any program that does complex arithmetic....
Stewart.
