Re: [Axiom-mail] Aldor compatibility

[Mike Dewar]

Dear Zork,

On Sat, Sep 18, 2004 at 06:46:57PM -0700, Zork wrote:
> 1.  What is the extent of compatibility between aldor 1.0.2 as posted
> in www.aldor.org and cvs axiom?  Does the current version of aldor
> always generate code that runs in cvs version of axiom?  If not, maybe
> it would be a good idea to post a page with the differences and things
> to avoid.
The Aldor support was designed to operate with the CCL version of Axiom,
not the new GCL one.  However Stephen Wilson's experiment seems to
suggest that it works fine :-)

The settings will assume that the compiler and the libraries that it
uses are in the same locations as was the case with the original NAG
version.  You can change these settings via ")set compiler" in the Axiom
interpreter.

> 2. If I use aldor's import and export keywords for wrapping C and
> fortran code, will it be portable to axiom? Or does axiom have a
> separate ffi?
The answers to these questions are "no" and "sort of".  Axiom per se has
no foreign language interface but the underlying Lisp often does (GCL
does for example).
 
> 3.  I know some C, f77 and Scilab but no Octave.  I see that one of
> the to-do things is translating octave's numerical code into aldor;
> which kind of routines are missing from aldor and have higher
> priority?
I'm not sure whether its worth translating existing numerical code into
Aldor.  Fortran, particularly if your compiler has a good optimiser,
will always be much more efficient, and as you know you can access it in
Aldor via the Foreign Fortran interface.  However it might be an
interesting and useful exercise to consider how Axiom/Aldor's type
system could be used to provide a better interface to existing numerical
code.

Cheers, Mike.

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