Extending arithmetic

[Steven H. Rogers, PhD.]

Peter-Henry Mander wrote:
> 
>  From what I've been hearing on this discussion, I don't think tuples 
> are the proper vehicle for multidimentional math, they're just too 
> abstract.
> 
> Why not introduce new *numeric* types instead of contriving tuples to 
> act like numbers? Then there will be less scope for surprises and 
> exceptions occuring. The overloaded operators will be *little* more 
> specific too, as I don't see how to determine what TupleA + TupleB does 
> by simply looking at the statement; what happens when either one or both 
> represent neither scalors, vectors nor matricies? Do I have to catch a 
> potential exception? My brain begins to hurt! It's beginning to have the 
> same problems as you can get with C++, yuk!
> 
> Please reconsider.
> 
> Pete.
> 
> 
I'm not prepared to go out and change Erlang.  I'm sure that I 
understand it well enough to attempt that.  Combining the concurency of 
Erlang with the numerical abilities of APL might be cool, but the number 
of users needing this capability is likely to be too small to be worth 
while.  A better approach may be to write a package providing interfaces 
to LAPACK and/or other numerical C libraries.

Regards,
Steve
-- 
  _    Steven H. Rogers, PhD.
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