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From: jeenglis@alcor.usc.edu (Joe English Muffin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C for numerical work
Message-ID: <13615@chaph.usc.edu>
Date: 12 Dec 90 09:33:09 GMT
References: <1990Dec5.185852.5191@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca> <X2uRT4w163w@mantis.UUCP> <1990Dec12.011232.11101@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>
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mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) writes:

>In article <X2uRT4w163w@mantis.UUCP> mathew@mantis.UUCP (mathew) writes:
>>Common Lisp's
>>great for numerical stuff... if only it were faster!

>Now that's an intriguing comment...  I never thought of Lisp as a
>numerical language.  What facilities does it provide?

*EVERYTHING*.  Common Lisp has a rich set of of
primitive data types, including arbitrary-precision
integers and rationals, plus a full set of numerical
functions.  All the numerical primitives are fully
polymorphic, as in Fortran (a big win over C), and the
data abstraction facilities are excellent (a big win
over Fortran).  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.

Interpreted functions are still slow as mail, but it's
possible to bring the level of optimization to near
that of Fortran for compiled code.  Unfortunately,
most of the good Lisp compilers cost Big Bucks, and
the runtime support required is usually so high that
you still need lots of memory.


--Joe English

  jeenglis@alcor.usc.edu