Re: PARI translated to C

[Karim BELABAS <Karim.Belabas@math.u-psud.fr>]

[Ilya writes:]
> Currently PARI uses assembler-like handling of GENs.
> 
> This patch provides new C-style definition for GEN and the subtypes
> for GEN.  Minor changes to .h files are done to fix signatures of functions
> if appropriate.
> 
> Backward compatibility is preserved when PARI_OLD_GEN is
> defined before inclusion of pari.h.
> 
> No *.c files of PARI library has been changed to follow new conventions,
> but ./example/matexp.c is.  Note that for the style matexp.c is written 
> in the advantages of the new style are minuscule (you need no less
> type conversions from/to generic type), but for functions which need
> to access components of GENs the advantage should be obvious.
> Moreover, a transition to C++ may make most of the casts go away.

I'm not including this patch. It's an interesting idea but
1) I'm not sure is should be done that way.

2) It's obviously a big change in philosophy (backward compatible as it may be).

We'll see after the "stable" release (if anybody out there uses PARI in
library mode, please express yourself!)

Also, you might want to have a look at Thomas Papanikolaou's PaLi project
(C++ headers for PARI library, includes automatic Garbage Collecting).

  http://www.math.u-bordeaux.fr/~papanik/pali.html

Karim.
--
Karim Belabas                    email: Karim.Belabas@math.u-psud.fr
Dep. de Mathematiques, Bat. 425
Universite Paris-Sud             Tel: (00 33) 1 69 15 57 48
F-91405 Orsay (France)           Fax: (00 33) 1 69 15 60 19
--
PARI/GP Home Page: http://pari.home.ml.org