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From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Lisp vs APL for numeric work (was Re: Fortran vs. C for numerical work)
Message-ID: <1990Dec12.175323.8958@Think.COM>
Date: 12 Dec 90 17:53:23 GMT
References: <X2uRT4w163w@mantis.UUCP> <1990Dec12.011232.11101@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> <13615@chaph.usc.edu>
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Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
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In article <13615@chaph.usc.edu> jeenglis@alcor.usc.edu (Joe English Muffin) writes:
>  The numerical facilities in Common
>Lisp are second only to those in APL among the most
>common languages (well, those that I know of
>anyway), including Fortran.

I'd hazard to say that they're even better than APL.  Does APL have
arbitrary precision rational numbers, complex numbers (I think they're an
experimental feature in some APLs), and multiple floating point formats?

I think the actual set of numerical functions that CL and APL provide are
about the same.  And many of the definitions of CL numerical functions are
based on the corresponding APL functions.
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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