Re: [OctDev] plans for bfgsmin and related cleanup

[Etienne G. <et...@cs...>]

  Hi All,

On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 07:52:28AM -0500, Bill Denney wrote:
# On Wed, 22 Mar 2006, Michael Creel wrote:
# 
# >Hello all,
# >I'm planning on converting the existing bfgsmin (source bfgsmin.cc) to a 
# >new function __bfgsmin (source __bfgsmin.cc), and writing a user frontend 
# >bfgsmin.m. A couple of questions
# 
# What is the benefit of doing this?

my guess:

1) Having a user-friendly func (.m) where the user-friendliness is
   written in Octave (ez on the developer).

2) Having a low-overhead func (__.cc) that you may use to do N>>1
   times almost the same thing, without paying N*overhead. This is
   only useful if you can actually determine the params for __.cc
   (perhaps if bfgs.m has a "show_me_how_to_do_it" options that
   returns the args it passes to __bfgs.cc).

Is my guess close?

  Etienne

# >1) All input checking will be in the .m file frontend. Thus, it will be 
# >possible to crash octave by directly calling __bfgsmin with bad 
# >arguments. Is that acceptable?
# 
# My personal opinion is that every function should do full error checking 
# of its arguements.  I know that people are writing web front-ends to 
# octave, and that could lead to dangerous code.
# 
# The way that I view this is that some day, someone will call __bfgsmin and 
# get an error and complain about it.  Then we'll have to add the arguement 
# checking anyway, so it should just be added from the beginning.
# 
# Bill
# 
# -- 
# "The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of government
# power, not the increase of it."
#   -- Woodrow Wilson
# 
# 
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-- 
Etienne Grossmann ------ http://www.cs.uky.edu/~etienne