> What about complex exponentiation? Probably the most user-friendly
> rule would be that we would do it whenever the result is correctly
> expressed in numbers only. The easy case is integral powers:
>
> (1+2*%i)^3 => -2*%i-11
> 1/(1+%i) => 1/2 - %i/2 (though arguably (1-%i)/2 is clearer in
> some contexts)
With large integer powers, maybe it's not clear what is best. Computations
such as
> a : (2/3 + %i)^(10^9 + 1);
> b : (2/3 + %i)^(10^9);
> a/b --> (long number) / (long number) --> 2/3 + %i
are somewhat embarrassing. And for complex floating point, such
computations
might be inaccurate.
Barton