Should we use boost::math::log1p/expm1 instead of rtl_math_log1p/expm1 ?

[Andrew Douglas Pitonyak]

On 09/15/2014 03:38 PM, julien2412 wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Following
> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=a3ad01dc1e07da21182077bd899094fd73f57714,
> should  it worth it to replace rtl_math_log1p/rtl_math_expm1 and related by
> boost::math::log1p/expm1 ?
> Or should we let the code as it is right now?
>
> Since we already use Boost, I thought it could be interesting to use it even
> more, waiting by a even more C++11 compatibility (since this standard
> includes these 2 functions).
>
> Julien
>
>
>
> --
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> Sent from the Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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Julien, I am curious if you have done any testing. On a whim, I ran the 
following on my 64-bit Fedora machine using g++.

#include <boost/math/special_functions/log1p.hpp>
#include <boost/math/special_functions/expm1.hpp>

#include <iostream>
#include <math.h>

int main()
{
   double min_x = -0.2;
   double max_x = 0.2;
   long max_its = 10000000;
   double delta_x = (max_x - min_x) / (max_its - 1);
   double x;
   double d;
   long i;
   for (i=0; i<max_its; ++i) {
     x = min_x + i * delta_x;
     d = fabs(log1p(x) - boost::math::log1p(x));
     if (d > 0.0) {
       std::cout << "1. diff(" << x << ") = " << d << std::endl;
     }
   }

   for (i=0; i<max_its; ++i) {
     x = min_x + i * delta_x;
     d = fabs(expm1(x) - boost::math::expm1(x));
     if (d > 0.0) {
       std::cout << "2. diff(" << x << ") = " << d << std::endl;
     }
   }
   std::cout << "Finished!" << std::endl;
   return 0;
}

No differences were found in this little test. Then again, on Fedora, 
Boost may be configured to use the built-in implementation, I don't 
really know. I did not check our source code, but, it might reduce the 
LO code complexity a little bit, that might be a gain.

-- 
Andrew Pitonyak
My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt
Info:  http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php