[Numpy-discussion] Core math library in numpy

[David Cournapeau]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 5:26 PM, Pauli Virtanen <pav at iki.fi> wrote:
> Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:05:03 +0900, David Cournapeau wrote:
> [clip]
>>> I think they should be. Then we could easily use C99 complex math
>>> functions on plaforms on which they are available (and so get the
>>> "correct" corner-case semantics for free on these platforms).
>>
>> maybe we could change the names, then ? nc is not very clear IMHO (and
>> since they were static up to now, we are free to change them I believe).
>
> I think it would make sense to change them to follow C99 function names,
> with a npy_ prefix.

The problem of complex functions is that they don't follow the C99
conventions at all. IN particular, they accept pointers instead of
values. I don't know whether the rational for using pointers is still
valid (it is mentioned that how to pass structure is compiler
dependent - I would guess this is true mainly for fortran, I would
expect the C ABI of every platform to fix those kind of issues ?)

Using C99 names for functions with different prototypes may be confusing,

cheers,

David