FreeMat v3.6 - Online Documentation

TYPERULES Type Rules

Section: FreeMat Functions

Usage

FreeMat follows an extended form of C's type rules (the extension is to handle complex data types. The general rules are as follows:

• Integer types are promoted to int32 types, except for matrix operations and division operations.
• Mixtures of float and complex types produce complex outputs.
• Mixtures of double or int32 types and dcomplex types produce dcomplex outputs.
• Arguments to operators are promoted to the largest type present among the operands.
• Type promotion is not allowed to reduce the information content of the variable. The only exception to this is 64-bit integers, which can lose information when they are promoted to 64-bit double values.

These rules look tricky, but in reality, they are designed so that you do not actively have to worry about the types when performing mathematical operations in FreeMat. The flip side of this, of course is that unlike C, the output of numerical operations is not automatically typecast to the type of the variable you assign the value to.

Page Last Updated on: Monday, March 17, 2008, 01:03:20 PM (CET)