On 10.01.2008, at 11:16, Oliver Jennrich wrote:
I'm wondering if updating the constants without a possibility to revert to an earlier version is a good idea.
Generally this is an important point for reproducibility.However, personally, I do not care. Under normal circumstances I want to use the current "correct" values. If I want to reproduce some old calculation I use the same old GSL version to really get the same calculation results - after all the code also changes continuously.
Would it be useful to have something like GSL_CONST_MKSA_SPEED_OF_LIGHT_2000 GSL_CONST_MKSA_SPEED_OF_LIGHT_2006 and GSL_CONST_MKSA_SPEED_OF_LIGHT to be either of the two, depending on a #define?
The default value should definitely be the latest, but one could envision to have
GSL_CONST_CODATA_1998define the values according to that standard. However, someone needs to implement it and it needs to be maintained as time goes and new standards are published. It should also be made clear that everybody uses the latest values for scientific calculations...
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