Revamping the numeric classes

[Shlomi Fish]

On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Dylan Thurston wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 06, 2001 at 03:25:11PM +0100, Koen Claessen wrote:
> > What do people think about this? If people prefer these
> > stylistic changes, I think we should not hesitate making
> > them for Haskell/2 by completely redesigning the module
> > structure and using more consistent naming conventions.
> 
> These sound great to me.  If Haskell/2 is indeed open to such changes,
> would also be possible to revamp the numeric modules?  As a
> mathematician, I get annoyed by such things as
> 
> * (+) and (-) being lumped in with (*) (doesn't anyone use vector spaces?)
> 

Another problem is that sometimes several types of multiplication are
possible. In Matlab and PerlDL, for instance, matrixes can be multiplied
cell by cell, or matrix-wise. Of course both languages differntiate those
two uses: in Matlab matrix mulitplication is "*" and cell-by-cell one is 
".*"; in PerlDL matrix multiplication is "x" (which is a perl operator
that normally means string or array replication) and cell-by-cell one is
"*".

So I suppose each one of those operators should be on its own template (or
class in Haskell-speak). Afterwards, all we have to do is write
HaskellDL... :)

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish




----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@vipe.technion.ac.il 
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
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