Ops Review

[Bob Rogers]

   From: chromatic <chromatic at wgz.org>
   Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:57:55 -0800

   On Monday 19 January 2009 13:41:21 Bob Rogers wrote:

   >    Math ops:
   >            - ceil/floor
   >            - transcendental ops
   >            - gcd/lcm/fact
   >
   > What are you suggesting as replacements?  Or (with the probable
   > exception of fact) must every language reinvent these wheels?

   I had in mind the idea that they could become members of a PBC library.

   -- c

Do you think that would be fast enough?  The usual way for dynamic
languages to get fast compiled numeric code is to bind variables to
hardware types at compile time, and then inline numeric operations in
order to use that information.  That seems to require op_i_i_i and
op_n_n_n versions of these ops, which are not language-dependent.

   And possibly of other ops as well.  Speed should certainly not be an
issue for Parrot 1.0, so I can see not wanting to add new numeric ops,
but I don't see the point of removing ops we already have only to decide
we need them later.

					-- Bob