🚀 go-pugleaf

In <4jhm0c$ak8@ra.nrl.navy.mil> pitre@n5160d.nrl.navy.mil (Richard Pitre) writes:

...
>  ... The practical options
>  are to include complex numbers or provide a mechanism for overloading
>  the appropriate operations symbols. I think that the simplicity of the
>  language would be almost completely unaffected by incorporating complex 
>  numbers.

   Well, I can't help but wade in on this thread.  If we are really going
to make the language look like mathematics then I would request vector
and matrix notation so that I can write:  A = B + C where, A, B, C
are conformal tensor objects.  One also needs to be able
to return such things from functions, e.g, B := f(A).  Unfortunately,
we start to create something that looks very much like APL.
   I suggest that the real solution resides in the next generation of
computing devices where symbolic computations (and their related
numeric calculations) are initiated with a pen.

-Doug



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  Douglas G. Danforth, Ph.D.                       danforth@csli.stanford.edu
  Visiting Scholar                                 (415)723-2487 x332 vox  
  Applied Speech Technology Lab                    (415)725-2166 fax
  Center for the Study of Language and Information
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