Food for thought: Numeric.Special

[Matthew Donadio]

Hi all,

I am currently working on a module where I need some "special" math
functions (elliptic integrals and Jacobi elliptic functions).  This got
me thinking that there may be a place in the Numeric hierarchy for a
Special branch.

I think the only sane way to do this is with FFI, and I think the GNU
Scientific Library (GSL) is the best target for this.  Some people may
have access to the IMSL or NAG libraries, but I doubt that most do.  I
also believe that GSL is available for all of the targets currently
served by the various Haskell compilers, including Windows

The best way to attack this is probably to have a module for each group
of functions.  So there would be Numeric.Special.Gamma,
Numeric.Special.Zeta, etc.  The Haskell names would match the GSL names
minus the gsl_sf prefix.

Most (all?) of the functions are pure, and basically accept doubles or
ints as parameters and return a double.  So, it's not a hard job, but
there are a zillion functions.  I am willing to (slowly) tackle the job
since I already have it started.

Thoughts?  Comments?

-- 
Matthew Donadio <m.p.donadio@ieee.org>