Does it make sense to define a class for Complex numbers, where real/imaginary parts use Numeric[T] instead of a concrete type?

Question

Would something like

class Complex[T: Numeric](real: T, imag: T)

make sense, instead of writing a Complex class using Double s, one using Long s, one using BigInt s, so that everyone can choose the number type he needs?

How would performance compare to the non-generic approach?

Answer 1

For the moment, Numeric is not @specialized . So the generic version using it will suffer from boxing and unboxing and the performances will be greatly reduced. Here is a nice blog post with performance measurments:

http://www.azavea.com/blogs/labs/2011/06/scalas-numeric-type-class-pt-2/

However, you could directly write a @specialized version of your Complex number class without using Numeric and get all the benefits.

On a strictly pragmatic point of view, I am not sure to understand what's the usage of a complex number with integer parts...