🚀 go-pugleaf

Student writes ...

Rw. Hutchinson asks about the Modula-2 Standard. My
information is that things are progressing albeit
slowly. I would be surprised if its finished this 
year. The current draft is D106/N336 dated 29th October
1989.  The next issue is rumoured to be scheduled for 
about the spring of this year. Its getting bigger all 
the time. 

Hutchinson is correct in his belief that complex numbers
are supported. This was proposed by the Canadian
committee following their introduction into the
ANSI Standard for Extended Pascal. A brief summary
is as follows:-

    type-identifiers    COMPLEX
                        LONGCOMPLEX

     operators          + - * /

     functions          CMPLX    constructor
                        RE       extractor
                        IM       extractor

Two maths-libraries are proposed: ComplexMath and 
LongComplexMath. The latest proposal that I have
seen dedfines the first as:-

    DEFINITION MODULE ComplexMath;
      PROCEDURE abs(cmplx: COMPLEX): REAL;
      PROCEDURE arg(cmplx: COMPLEX): REAL;
      PROCEDURE exp(cmplx: COMPLEX): COMPLEX;
      PROCEDURE ln(cmplx: COMPLEX): COMPLEX;
      PROCEDURE polarToComplex(abs, arg: REAL): COMPLEX;
      PROCEDURE sqrt(cmplx: COMPLEX): COMPLEX;
    END ComplexMath.

with obvious extension to LongComplexMath. This is
due to Rick Sutcliffe (Rick_Sutcliffe@cc.sfu.ca)
at Trinity Western University. 

The only Modula-2 compiler I know of to support
this is the Unix one by EPC in Edinburgh. They pulled
in their treatment of complex from their Pascal-E
compiler and it just happened that they got close
to what has been proposed for the standard.  They
point out that they don't have the library yet,
but they would add one if someone can tell them 
excatly what the final definition is going to be.

They also have other features of the draft Standard:
multi-dimensional open-arrays, extended definition
of VAL, and module clean-up.

Their compilers are available for most Unix systems. 
At any rate, you can contact them at any of the following:-


in Europe				in USA and North America

EPC					MSS Ltd.
17 Alva Street				2107 North First Street
Edinburgh				Suite 600
EH2 4PH					San Jose CA95131
Scotland				USA
UK

Tel: (+44) 31 225 6262			Tel: 408 452 0527
Fax: (+44) 31 225 6644			Fax: 408 452 0686
Email:  support@epc.ed.ac.uk