On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 02:27:34AM -0700, William Stein wrote:
>
> On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 1:26 AM, Nicolas M. Thiery
> <nicolas.thi...@u-psud.fr> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 09:10:43PM -0700, Robert Bradshaw wrote:
> >> > - I see 10*bla as (potentially) involving two independent things:
> >> > coercion and multiple dispatch
> >>
> >> Yep, though in my mind they're a bit more intertwined (e.g. for a \in
> >> Z, b \in QQ[x], one can do a*b by doing a coercion then an action,
> >> b._lmul_(QQ(a)).
> >
> > Definitely.
> >
> >> > For whatever it's worth, I had started writing a draft of paper on the
> >> > coercion (= implicit conversion) and multiple dispatch mechanism I had
> >> > implemented in MuPAD:
> >> >
> >> > http://mupad-combinat.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/mupad-combinat/
> >> > trunk/MuPAD-Combinat/Papers/2007-12-13-Overloading.tex?view=markup
> >> >
> >> > Strangely enough, I lost part of my motivation for working on this
> >> > shortly after :-)
> >>
> >> I'll take a look. I've been intending to write this up as a paper
> >> too, but haven't found the time yet.
> >
> > Well, maybe we could join forces, and write a paper "coercion and
> > dispatch in Sage and MuPAD". Having more than one implementation of
> > the concept would even make it a standard :-)
> Did you guys independently arrive at the same solution?
As far as I know yes. My first implementation in MuPAD dates from
2003. My reimplementation in December 2007 is essentially a technical
optimization (distributed datastructure). When I first met with Robert
in San-Diego and discussed the matter, the main lines were readily the
same.
> Is it "the concept"?
I guess that once a certain level of complexity in the
coercions/overloading is reached, there are not that many options for
how a coercion system for mathematics could work in a dynamically
typed language. Also, most of the ideas were in the air (multiple
dispatch, ...).
Cheers,
Nicolas
--
Nicolas M. Thiéry "Isil" <nthi...@users.sf.net>
http://Nicolas.Thiery.name/
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