[Ecls-list] Re: Decimal Numbers

[GP lisper]

On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 11:49:15 -0400, <marcoxa at cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
> On Aug 19, 2005, at 3:16 AM, GP lisper wrote:
>> On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 17:16:26 -0400, <marcoxa at cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> It is not a question of "within your reach" or not.  Floats are in the
>>> ANSI spec, you cannot remove them and still have a Common Lisp.
>>
>> Oh, hadn't considered that.  But then I was listening to J. McCarthy
>> when he was complaining that the creation of the ANSI spec destroyed
>> the experimental side of lisp.
>
> I do not give that much credit to such arguments, even if they come 
> form McCarthy (whose namesake is well earned, on the side :) ).

It was an interesting room reaction.  The evidence supports him, since
CL hasn't changed much, lots of libs to prop it up however.  At the
time he spoke, I was on your side of the question, but now...  The
most experimental Lisp I know is LUSH, and anytime that is mentioned
on c.l.l, you can expect a flood of posts saying "It's not Common
Lisp!", killing the thread.  It seems clear to me that CL and
near-common experimental lisp can co-exist, and bring growth to the
community.  The SBCL <-> CMUCL communities are somewhat like that now.


> I apologize for sounding sanctimonius, but you can experiment with 
> Common Lisp as much as you want.  TRW to do this is to create your own 
> package which defines the decimal arithmetic.  Once you have it and you 
> have the #D syntax in place and much accepted, then you (we) can start 
> a campaign to have the various implementors start treating them as #C 
> for complex.  This is the kind of experimentation I like.

No apology necessary, ever.

TRW for you, not for me.  It is too annoying to rewrite everything,
and frankly not the Lisp approach I see constantly taught.  To track
down every computation and 'correct' it for some library package,
versus reaching into the core add,subtract,etc.  If I thought I could
tackle the control code for using the integer or float routines, then
I would use a different approach.  But my simple mind says find the
all float routines and change them appropriately.


>>   I also didn't expect everyone to drop
>> their current Common Lisp in a rush to a decimized uncommon lisp.
>> It's an experiment, a side branch, only useful if it works out.
>> 'slisp' is unusable, as it only has integers currently and is likely
>> to be too primative, and most important, lacks a group of active
>> developers.
>
> You can do financial computations in CL using ratios if you need to.  
> That may or may not help, but at least in CL you already have it.

Doesn't really work out (I worked thru it a few days ago for the
current problem), and once again, you obscure the problem syntax.
That Decimal Number package has been around for a long time, and the
webpage covers all sides of the question....basically meaning that
rationals would be mentioned if they fully solved the problem.

But at the moment, I haven't gotten CVS ECL to run much anyway,
something wrong in the build environment apparently. So my desire to
sort thru it to see how clean the float implementation might be is
dulled....that and I can use Microsoft Excel now.  :(


-- 
Program A uses CLOS, Program B is implemented with structs, leading
to a fourfold increase in execution speed.  --J. B. Heimatseiten