[PD-dev] list object operators

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> Regarding your suggestion of speeding up list-math: What about extending
> [expr] to handle lists as well? Maybe a new variable could deal with
> this like $l1, $l2, ..., so that things like this would be possible:
> [expr $f1 * $l1].  I didn't think too much about the best syntax for
> list-expr yet, like when should the result be a list,

[expr~]'s $v1,$v2,... could be a source of inspiration (and of
compatibility-by-analogy)

Else, GridFlow and VASP and iemmatrix are other possible sources.

> when should it be a scalar, how to handle the two kinds of
> multiplication possible with [expr $l1 * $l2] (inner product with a
> scalar result vs. element-wise product to a list),

There are more kinds of products than just that. with lists of 3 elements
you may have the wedge-product (partial determinant). there are a bunch of
other "inner" products according to Hilbert's inner product axioms.  
Basically a product could be any operator $ for which

  (a*b)$c = a*(b$c) = b$(a*c)

where * is the product-by-scalar. That's damn wide. In math books, which
operator is used depends on context. Me, I prefer saying * for pointwise,
and saying #inner for the dot product. Matlab4 prefers saying .* for 
pointwise and * for the dot product.

Miller, with a phd in math, prolly has a few ideas about it himself, if he 
bothers to speak them...

> what to do with "mixed" lists that also include symbols and gpointers
> etc., but the basic concept looks very useful to me.

That's a damn good question. The most forward-compatible thing you can 
do is abort on everything you don't know how to handle. If stuff was 
accepted loosely, people would start depending on that behaviour, and 
later introducing a proper behaviour would be impossible.

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| Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju
| Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada