[SciPy-dev] reimplementation of lfilter

[David Cournapeau]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 9:29 PM, Ravi <lists_ravi at lavabit.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wednesday 23 September 2009 04:31:40 David Cournapeau wrote:
>>  - it is much more likely that your improvements will be included if
>> you provide patches instead of rewrite of the full code - it makes
>> reviewing much easier.
>
> In this case, I respectfully disagree; the full rewrite actually makes sense
> when comparing the previous code to the current one.

It can be a full rewrite, but still should be sent as patches. If I am
the one to review, I would prefer this way. That's especially
important to track regressions.

>
>>  - I would also prefer having C instead of C++ as well - in this case,
>> C++ does not bring much since we have our "templating" system and you
>> don't use the STL much.
>>  - In any case, please do not use exception, it is not portable.
>
> Are there any such compilers on which scipy can be compiled?

It is a fundamental problem of C++. Different compilers do not
propagate exceptions the same way, and that's a problem when different
compilers are involved (happens easily when the C and C++ compilers
are not the same, for example). That has been a problem on every new
platform I have tried to port numpy and scipy to.

That's the same rationale as why avoiding fortran runtime calls - if
you only use fortran, it is ok, but once you use the fortran runtime
and the C runtime in the same extension, you get random crashes which
are impossible to debug.

cheers,

David