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Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 22:17:49 +0100
From: Martin Dowie <martin.dowie@btopenworld.com>
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Subject: Re: Ada vs Fortran for scientific applications
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Date: 2006-05-23T22:17:49+01:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Rich Townsend wrote:
> Brooks Moses wrote:
>> Rich Townsend wrote:
>>
>>> Gareth Owen wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think assuming anything about A*B is extremely dangerous.  Just of
>>>> the top of my head, Ada and Matlab think it means matrix
>>>> multiplication and Fortran and Mathematica think its pointwise
>>>> multiplication.
>>>>
>>>> It means basically nothing in C, and in C++ it means whatever the
>>>> matrix class implementor wanted it to mean.
>>>
>>>
>>> My stance on A*B is this: if A*B denotes matrix multiplication, then 
>>> A/B should denote matrix 'division': B^-1*A. Which means you need to 
>>> standardize matrix inversion/linear-equations solution into the 
>>> language. Which is batshit crazy.
>>
>>
>> I believe that's how Matlab does it.
>>
>> Then again, for Matlab's purposes, standardizing matrix inversion and 
>> linear-equation solution into the language is entirely reasonable.
>>
> 
> Exactly. But I don't think you would find a single person in this 
> newsgroup who would support inclusion of a solver in Fortran. And the 
> reason would be netlib.
> 
> In this respect, Matlab is a language *AND* a library; whereas Fortran 
> is just a language, and netlib is the numerics metalibrary for it.

Hmmm, that sounds suspiciously like what has just been standardized 
within Ada (Ada2005 that is).

Here is a link to the "Rationale" written by John Barnes:
http://www.adaic.org/standards/05rat/html/Rat-7-6.html

Cheers
-- Martin