Re: OONSTD: Abstract Data Types

Brian Glendenning (bglenden@aoc.nrao.edu)
Wed, 08 Jul 1998 10:53:03 -0600

I think it would be very useful to standardize arrays at least to the F90 array
level. It seems to me that arrays are the fundamental "atoms" of scientific
computing. It is important for the same reason that a standard string type is
important - it lets application writers or library implementors use independently
developed code without always having to devolve down to a double*, or write lots of
code to interconvert between array types. Until we have standard array types I think
we will only see limited code reuse amongst scientific packages.

Having said this, I also agree that now is not the time to standardize array classes.
We should either wait for a de facto (or de jure - maybe valarray will be more useful
than people now expect) standard to emerge, or at least wait and see how
template-expression based implementations are working out in practice.

Brian

--
        Brian Glendenning - National Radio Astronomy Observatory
bglenden@nrao.edu              Socorro NM               (505) 835-7347