Re: question on Lua 5.2 release

[Francesco Abbate <gslshell@...>]

2010/1/15 Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo <lhf@tecgraf.puc-rio.br>:
>> On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Francesco Abbate <gslshell@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I have a question for Lua developers. There is in Lua 5.2 any support
>> > for native complex numbers to be configured as an option at compile
>> > time ?
>>
>> Unfortunately, C99-style complex numbers are not ISO C.  And good luck
>> trying to get Microsoft to implement C99 features ;)
>>
>> For the casual user, lcomplex. For the hardcore user, LNUM.
>
> Exactly. That said, it should be simple to add the required defines in luaconf.h

I understand that you care about ISO C and that not all the compilers
implement the C99 standard. For the other side I was wondering if this
should be a problem as far as the support for complex number is an
option: you can just enable it if you have a C99 compiler.

It is also true that GCC is available on almost any platform including
M$ Windoze but I guess that a significant fraction of Lua users cares
about MS Visual C.

Talking about the 'simple modification in luaconf.h' I'm wondering if
you can really add support for complex number so easily. I believe
that support for complex number is more complex and should be
something in the direction of what done in the LNUM parch of Asko.

The LNUM patch is pretty good but there is a known *huge* bug and Asko
refuse to fix it  may be because he lacks of time.

Doug Rogers also fixed a second bug in LNUM but we didn't commit the
patch to Asko, it was just integrated in GSL shell.

So, as a matter of fact, LNUM is quite good in principle but it does
have known bugs and is not maintained by the author.

I guess that now is too late to add complex number support in Lua 5.2, dommage !

:-(

Francesco