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From: "Nasser M. Abbasi" <nma@12000.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: is having a complex type as built-in the languages vs. being in
 standard
 package makes performance difference?
Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 13:25:38 -0500
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Date: 2012-05-16T13:25:38-05:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Just a basic question for the experts.

Ada provides complex data types by a package:

http://progopedia.com/language/ada/

"Ada provides complex datatype, which requires using
packages Generic_Complex_Types and Generic_Complex_Elementary_Functions
and instantiating them with the type of complex number to use"

While a language like Fortran, complex type is 'built-in' the
language, i.e. part of the language intrinsic data types.

What I wondered about is: would this makes a difference when it comes
to the performance of generated code that uses these types in
computations?

i.e. Would the code generated by the compiler by more 'efficient'
somehow if complex was built-in vs. being provided by a package,
or do you think by the time the compiler is done with the code
generation and optimization, then this all becomes irrelevant
'similar' compiler backend generated code will eventually
result in terms of efficiency of the computation?

(It might be possible actually to see this using gcc since
it supports both gnat and gfortran as front end?).

On a side-note, any one knows why when Ada was originally designed
in late 1970's, why complex type was not included as part of its
basic data types?

thanks,
--Nasser