[ioke-dev] What should complex numbers look like?

[Ola Bini <ola.bini@gmail.com>]

Hey,

Wanted some input here. I'm thinking about finishing the numeric tower 
for Ioke - and the two major omissions are currently complex numbers, 
and units/dimensions. I'm pretty sure about how to handle the latter, 
but complex numbers are slightly more complicated. The main complication 
is whether they should be given special syntax or not.

If not, it would possible work to represent them as a tuple where the 
second part is imaginary. That could be implemented using an "i" unit:

 (10, 4i) * 2

Not sure if that's the best approach, though.

Another alternative is to just to allow freefloating 4i literals that 
can be combined using +:

 10+4i

I would like to have a specific syntax for them if possible, though - so 
if someone comes up with a clever, clean way of representing complex 
numbers, it would be really helpful. =)

Cheers
--
 Ola Bini (http://olabini.com)
  Ioke - JRuby - ThoughtWorks

 "Yields falsehood when quined" yields falsehood when quined.