🚀 go-pugleaf

> Why leave out complex numbers and complex
> transcendental functions? Maybe Oberon is slightly simpler without this
> but any programs that use complex arithmetic are automatically more complicated
> and less efficient without language support.
> I see no good argument for leaving complex arithmetic out of Oberon
> if you've already gone to the trouble to include  floating point numbers. 
> Why alienate so many people who desparately need good tools like this? 
> If you don't think its a problem then its because you've never tried
> to do it. The readability goes to hell. 
> 
> richard

At least one commercial Oberon-2 compiler already has support for complex numbers.
(I don't recall the name.)  The freeware optimizing compiler OOC will eventually
have support for complex numbers as well -- just not in the first releases.

The rationale for including complex numbers was that the overhead of doing them
any other way was just not justified.  We discussed the pros and cons at some
length before finally deciding to include them.  Basically any module(s) which
use complex numbers are going to be inherently unportable anyway (no matter
what flavour of complex numbers you use) so complex support can be considered
an extension of Oberon-2.  The addition won't break existing Oberon-2 programs
and you don't have to use them if you want portable code.