I think this suggestion regarding sign is solid. From both theoretical and 
practical points of view.

And agree with all of Aaron’s points as well.

Regards,
DG

> On 4 Jan 2024, at 22:58, Robert Kern <robert.k...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jan 3, 2024 at 4:09 PM Aaron Meurer <asmeu...@gmail.com 
> <mailto:asmeu...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> sign(z) = z/|z| is a fairly standard definition. See
> https://oeis.org/wiki/Sign_function <https://oeis.org/wiki/Sign_function> and
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_function 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_function>. It's also implemented
> this way in MATLAB and Mathematica (see
> https://www.mathworks.com/help/symbolic/sign.html 
> <https://www.mathworks.com/help/symbolic/sign.html> and
> https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Sign.html 
> <https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Sign.html>). The function
> z/|z| is useful because it represents a normalization of z as a vector
> in the complex plane onto the unit circle.
> 
> With that being said, I'm not so sure about the suggestion about
> extending copysign(x1, x2) as |x1|*sign(x2). I generally think of
> copysign as a function to manipulate the floating-point representation
> of a number. It literally copies the sign *bit* from x2 into x1. It's
> useful because of things like -0.0, which is otherwise difficult to
> work with since it compares equal to 0.0. I would find it surprising
> for copysign to do a numeric calculation on complex numbers. Also,
> your suggested definition would be wrong for 0.0 and -0.0, since
> sign(0) is 0, and this is precisely where copysign matters.
> 
> Agreed on all points.
> 
> -- 
> Robert Kern
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