[geon]

Why would complex numbers in particular deserve to be a native type?

What about quaternions, or vectors and matrices of sizes 2-4 at least?

Is there any real advantage over just using a struct?

Would MultiArrayList help with performance for complex numbers and vectors?

[gliptic]

Zig doesn't (and never will) have operator overloading, so using any user-defined numeric types is awkward. It also already has vector types.

[the__alchemist]

This is IMO the canonical use case of operator overloads. Are you proposing adding complex numbers to the standard lib to circumvent that restriction, vice addressing it?

[ilayn]

Why should complex numbers need justification to be native type? If you need to do serious computation, you need them. If you say Zig is not for number crunching which, say, Java explicitly decided then fine otherwise searching for a reason for complex number tells me that you don't do any numerical programming which is fine but asking for justification makes no sense. Why is any other thing in the language justified? float64 is just two float32. Why stop at float64 why not float128 float256?

[geon]

What do you mean with ” float64 is just two float32.”?

[Q6T46nT668w6i3m]

I don’t think it’s more complicated than people want an abstraction for the complex number instructions you find on processors like the TMS320 series or Qualcomm Hexagon.