Re: How to use GNU MP in octave?

[David Bateman]

Ben Barrowes wrote:

> I have written a mex-based toolbox for ML which calls GMP and MPFR 
> routines to achieve arbitrary precision in ML:
> http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/loadFile.do?objectId=6446&objectType=FILE 
>
> This toolbox defines a new mp data type and overloads common functions 
> and operators using an @mp directory.


Unfortunately there is no class structure in octave at the moment and so 
the use of a @mp directory is out. However, classes is on JWE's ToDo in 
the maybe before 3.0 maybe after category. So I fully expect that octave 
will have classes sometime soon. Till then it is possible to include new 
types in octave, but they must be written entirely as C++ code.

> I have heard that there is mex functionality written into octave, but 
> I have not experimented with it. If the mex wrapper in octave is 
> substantially similar to ML's, perhaps this toolbox could be ported 
> without too much trouble.

You'd be better porting the mex to oct-files in the end. The problem is 
that matlab stores the real and imaginary parts of variables seperately, 
and so the interface from octave to mex has to handle these details, and 
so always pays a speed penalty.

Regards
David



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