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Comment by pixelpoet

10 months ago

For one thing, C3 thankfully understands that there are more mathemathical types people are interested in than just ints and reals, for example vectors: https://c3-lang.org/language-common/vectors/

Zig has SIMD vectors, but I frequently need 3D vectors, and refuse to use things like vec3_add(vec3_mul(a, 2), b) etc since I mainly develop 3D graphics software.

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pixelpoet

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bsder  10 months ago

In Zig, basic operations on vectors with standard operators work fine. "+", for example.

  const meta = @import("std").meta;
  
  test "vector add" {
     const x: @Vector(4, f32) = .{ 1, -10, 20, -1 };
     const y: @Vector(4, f32) = .{ 2, 10, 0, 1 };
     const z = x + y;
     try expect(meta.eql(z, @Vector(4, f32){ 3, 0, 20, 0 }));
  }

Everything is element-wise, which matches what the shading languages do (mostly).

But, yes, you won't get overloading allowing things like dot, cross, or scalar products. And I do miss the swizzle notation, but I don't think the language actually prevents that so it might appear at some point.

  • lerno  10 months ago

    C3 allows arbitrary extensions of any types, so things like `vec1.dot(vec2)` is actually implemented as a generic method macro over all vector types added by the math module.

    Given Zig's preference for closed modules, I don't expect this to be on the roadmap, but rather would need to be implemented as functions.

zem  10 months ago

interesting example of swizzling

``` int[<3>] a = { 11, 22, 33 }; int[<4>] b = a.xxzx; ```

I assume that the `xxzx` is translated directly by the compiler. not seen that in any other language though ruby can fake it pretty easily via `method_missing`