Comparison of Imaginary types

Damian McGuckin damianm at esi.com.au
Thu Jul 2 22:12:20 UTC 2026


On Thursday, 2 July 2026 at 16:33:28 UTC, Guillaume Piolat wrote:
> On Thursday, 2 July 2026 at 02:21:55 UTC, Damian McGuckin wrote:
>>
>> Are the "less than" and "greater than" operators supported on 
>> the purely imaginary types which I find quite useful 
>> occasionally?
>
> Probably, but.
> What would be the result then? It's clearer to write a.re < 
> b.re || a.im < b.im

BY imaginary types, I meant D's purely imaginary types such as 
ifloat and idouble. I know they have been deprecated but I am 
hoping not yet eliminated.

While Descartes called numbers with a purely real and purely 
imaginary components, Gauss started calling them complex. The 
word imaginary, which Descartes had suggested as an insult, fell 
out of favor from the time of Gauss. But, from about the 1920s, 
the term imaginary made a comeback but was then reserved for the 
non-real part of the complex number. Sadly since then, the use of 
the term imaginary has been used too loose. Mind you, even the 
use of real part and imaginary part is not always agreed upon, 
the Oxford and Webster' dictionares both disagreeing. The current 
contemporary usage is at odds with the original usage of the term 
when Maclaurin first introduced it three centuries ago, 1727 I 
think.

Enough of the history. So, given

     ifloat a = 2i;
     ifloat b = 4i;

The comparison

     a < b

is perfectly clear.

Where is the documentation on these deprecated ifloat and cfloat 
types please?

Thanks




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