Re: [OctDev] complex error function

[Daniel J Sebald]

On 11/21/2012 07:53 PM, Steven G. Johnson wrote:
> Michael D. Godfrey wrote:
> > I just took a look to see if I could recover the URL I saw a couple
> > of days ago. But, could not find it. Anyhow, the main point was that it
> > would appear that the implementation could be done for C99 glibc as
> > advertized in the man page
>
> The glibc maintainers almost never want to add new functions that aren't
> standardized in any way, and cerf is NOT part of the C99 standard --- it
> is merely reserved for possible future use, which makes it especially
> unlikely that glibc will accept an implementation until the required
> behavior of the function has been standardized.

Have you sent someone in command of that library an email to inquire?

Because it hasn't been accepted into the standard library doesn't mean 
it can't be used as an extension.  It sure would be nice though, if it 
were incorporated, to be just like "erf()" in the C++ code, but instead 
"cerf()".

The other part of this is that I would really like to see the algorithm 
evaluated before considering for inclusion in the core of Octave.  I'm 
sure there are at least a few people on this list capable of doing that, 
but I wonder if you are better served by opening this to a more 
algorithm-oriented audience or publication in SIAM or some similar journal.

I think there may be a fairly wide audience for cerf, cerfc, cexp2, 
cexpm1, clog10, clog1p, clog2, clgamma, ctgamma--more than what seem to 
think.  So, from my perspective there's interest.

Again, the package form is always a route to go.

Dan