Re: More efficient MEX or MEX-like interface

[John W. Eaton]

On 30-Sep-2008, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:

| I guess the main reason why Mathowrks chose this was the absence of
| complex type from C in the past.

It's always been possible to use an array of structs, so lack of a
built-in complex type was probably not it.

I think the original Fortran version of Matlab used separate arrays
for real and imaginary parts.  Perhaps that was because prior to
Fortran 77 (I think) did not have a complex type.  EISPACK also used
separate arrays, though LINPACK did not.

But anyway, there is another advantage, and that is that it doesn't
require any copying of data to convert a real object to a complex
object.  You just allocate another array for the imaginary part, but
you don't have to copy the real data into an interleaved storage
scheme.

jwe