From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2005-10-26T07:22:03+09:00
Subject: Re: narray and the stdlib

In article <Pine.LNX.4.62.0510251406490.2231@harp.ngdc.noaa.gov>,
Ara.T.Howard <Ara.T.Howard@noaa.gov> wrote:
>On Wed, 26 Oct 2005, Phil Tomson wrote:
>
>> In article <dcedf5e20510250919v45bdfdc6iceb8472fc2e56ce2@mail.gmail.com>,
>> Cameron McBride  <cameron.mcbride@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On a ruby-core thread:
>>>
>>> (in reference to http://rcrchive.net/rcr/show/260 )
>>>
>>> On 10/24/05, Ara.T.Howard <Ara.T.Howard@noaa.gov> wrote:
>>
>> Personally, I'd really like it if it were in the standard lib because then
>> I wouldn't have to install it on all the different machines I want to use
>> it on (Currently running simulations on a Linux box, two Solaris boxen,
>> and OSX).  However, I think the real pushback is that the standard ruby
>> distro is getting rather large and adding something with the limited
>> appeal of narray may not be such a good idea in the effort to keep Ruby
>> trim.
>>
>> I don't recall if narray is available as a gem or not.  As I recall the
>> last time I downloaded it it was not a gem.  So gem-ifying narray would
>> probably help, although I am using a version of narray that I have
>> modified so it doesn't do me much good.
>
>what did you do?  mine suports read/write mmap so an narray can be backed by a
>file and any write to the narray writes to the file - very dangerous, not
>reccomended, and extremely useful for tweaking a gb grid with minimal io.
>

I wanted to treat an NArray as an N-dimensional point so that I could find 
the distance from one point to another.  I added a distance method and a 
couple of other geometrically oriented methods in C.

Phil