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From: corbett@road.Eng.Sun.COM (Robert Corbett)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: MATRIX BASIC -- HOW BIG IS THE MARKET?
Keywords: design, question, Basic
Message-ID: <5326@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 5 Jan 91 05:29:34 GMT
References: <11651@j.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: compilers-sender@iecc.cambridge.ma.us
Reply-To: corbett@road.Eng.Sun.COM (Robert Corbett)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
Lines: 26
Approved: compilers@iecc.cambridge.ma.us


In article <11651@j.cc.purdue.edu> zhou@brazil.psych.purdue.edu (Albert Zhou) writes:
>I am intending to expand the current matrix operation interface I've designed
>into a full scale language on PC. Here is what I am considering:

>    (1) I don't want it to become a special language like mathematica,
>gauss, imsl and so on. Instead, I want it to be a clone of a popular
>language on PC with full matrix operation capacity. Since it has to be
>interpretive, the the ideal candidate would be BASIC. I would call it
>MATRIX BASIC.


ANSI BASIC, X3.113-1987, provides matrix operations including addition,
subtraction, multiplication, inverse, determinant, and scalar product.  I
presume that BASIC implementations that claim conformance with the standard,
such as True BASIC, implement those features (they are not optional).

If your package only includes simple matrix operations, I doubt you will find
much of a market.  If your package includes support for complex matrices and
analytic functions over them (not at all easy to implement), your sales might
increase by dozens.

					Yours truly,
					Bob Corbett
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