Re: Standard Library Interest?

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

Marin David Condic wrote:
> Now you're talking about having a *Good* square root routine. Your 
> "political position" is that before we can define "Sqrt (X)" we have to 
> know how to make a *good* one. My "political position" is that Fortran 
> had a "Sqrt (X)" that was "good enough" for me to get my work done and 
> that while someone is off defining a better way of computing the result, 
> my code could still be making reference to an interface that looked like 
> "Sqrt (X)" and when the better one comes along, I don't have to change 
> my code because they decided to call it "Square_Root (X)" instead.

As far as I know, all Ada compiler vendors provided the original Cody 
and Waite math functions as an additional library.  Relatively speaking, 
they were slow but accurate.  The only "problem" I am aware of is that 
DEC, Rational, Verdix, etc. chose different names for the package.

That was the major effect of not including them in the standard, you had 
to change the name in a with clause. (The function names and parameters, 
as far as I can remember were identical.  Hmmm.  I think there were some 
differences/discussions about the parameter names of the two parameter 
form of Arctangent.  Not something that really affected users.)

-- 
                                                     Robert I. Eachus

"Quality is the Buddha. Quality is scientific reality. Quality is the 
goal of Art. It remains to work these concepts into a practical, 
down-to-earth context, and for this there is nothing more practical or 
down-to-earth than what I have been talking about all along...the repair 
of an old motorcycle."  -- from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle 
Maintenance by Robert Pirsig