Re: FYI: sum improved

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Søren Hauberg <address@hidden> wrote:
> tir, 13 10 2009 kl. 12:38 +0200, skrev Jaroslav Hajek:
>> the built-in "sum" function was improved:
>> http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/192d94cff6c1
>
> Nice :-) It's always great to see improvements to the basic stuff.
>
>> "sum" now accepts an 'extra' option that makes it use a special
>> summation algorithm, compensating for loss of precision (slightly more
>> sophisticated than the well-known Kahan's).
>
> The name of the 'extra' option seems somewhat odd to me. Perhaps it
> should be called 'extra-precise', 'improve-accuracy', or something like
> that?
>

Well, since the option argument is currently only used to indicate
summation precision ("native" or "double"), I thought "extra" was
pretty good. I'm not against changing, but I would prefer a single
word if possible ("compensated"?). Multiword options should probably
use CamelCasing, like they do in many other functions.

-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert & GNU Octave developer
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz