>>>>> "Pedro" == Pedro Fortuny Ayuso <P.Fortuny@maths.qmul.ac.uk> writes:
Pedro> Osman:
>> How about if we adapt pari-gp for number theory calcs (primality
>> etc). It is written in c and very fast. This way maxima can
>> concentrate on symbolic calculations. I thought Bill was working on
>> this.
Pedro> That would be a good idea, although IMO, primality tests are simple
Pedro> enough to require very little lisp coding, and we would avoid foreign
Pedro> function calls. If this approach looks interesting for enough people,
Pedro> I am eager to start working on this (I am trying to learn lisp by now,
Pedro> and anyway the gurus in the list are surely kind enough to correct
Pedro> my mistakes).
While I would like to see this, I suspect that you won't be able to
make this run fast enough to be usable. The code will probably cause
so much consing that it runs slowly. A pure guess on my part.
Pedro> That is what I think. I guess Bill was trying to include pari-gp into
Pedro> gcl more than maxima, and that is pretty-hard-coding job! My suggestion
I think pari used to be used with gcl and/or maxima until he switched
to something else.
When maxima has an common ffi for supported lisps, I think this would
be an excellent way. And your lisp version wouldn't be wasted either
for those platforms that don't have an ffi, like Clisp on Mac OS X.
Ray