Complex numbers for Java

Efficient and elegant complex numbers are one of the preconditions for the use of Java in scientific computing. This paper introduces a preprocessor a nd its translation rules that map a new basic type complex and its operatio ns to pure Java, For the mapping it is insufficient to just replace one com plex-variable with two double-variables. Compared to code that uses Complex objects and method invocations to express arithmetic operations, the new b asic type increases readability and it is also executed faster. On average, the versions of our benchmark programs that use the basic type outperform the class-based versions by a factor of 2 up to 21 (depending on the JVM us ed). Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.