[SciPy-user] complex vector scalar product: wrong implementation

[Robert Kern]

Vladimir A. Roudnev wrote:
> Robert Kern wrote:
> 
>> For a lot of users, it is already later, not sooner. A lot of code 
>> depends on the current behaviour, and we would break that code by 
>> replacing dot with a different implementation.
> 
> 
> Can we say, how many is "a lot"? Is it 10, 100, or 100000? I'm really 
> curious.
> Is there any single user in this mail list who would fight to the finish 
> for the wrong implementation to save his/her own codes? Developers is a 
> different story, I suspect... :)

No, I don't know how much code would break. That's a problem with open 
source software: you never know who's using it.

And please, it's not the wrong implementation; neither Numeric nor Scipy 
are just linear algebra tools. It's the wrong name, and the docs are 
incomplete.

I suggest a general rule of thumb: don't break backwards compatibility 
for an issue that can be mostly alleviated by a documentation fix and a 
two-line workaround.

def ladot(a, b):
     return dot(conjugate(a), b)

If you're doing linear algebra, just use ladot() everywhere; it works 
just fine with reals and ints, too.

-- 
Robert Kern
rkern at ucsd.edu

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
  Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
   -- Richard Harter