Re: [Haskell-cafe] Complex numbers and (**)

On Sat, 8 Aug 2009, Paul Sargent wrote:

First post to the cafe, so "Hello everybody!". Hope this is reasonable subject matter and not too long.

I've been working on some algorithms that involved taking the n-th root of complex numbers. In my code I've implemented this as raising the complex number ('z') to 1/n using the (**) operator. Obviously, there are n roots, but I only need one of them so this is fine.

I have written something on that topic: http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Power_function I think the problem cannot be fully solved, especially not within the Haskell 98 numeric type classes. There is no satisfying implementation of (**) even for Float and Double.