Complex Numbers

Complex Numbers

• Terry19692000

  The closest in VB that you will get to being able to handle a complex number is double.NaN (not a number) which is retuned by:

  System.Math.sqrt(-1)

  The why not will have to be answered by MS:)

  
  
  

• Carolina Gomes

  Its not meant as a disrespect to the community of mathematical and scientific background but generally is not something that would be required as an intrinsic data type - in 20 years of software development I've never need to use it and if it was important to a huge group of software developers I'm sure it would have been added.

  If you feel it is an absolute necessity you are free to log a suggestion with MS.

  
  

• mmoeser

  No there is not an intrinsic complex number type

  http://www.vb-helper.com/howto_complex_number_class.html
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vbtchUseClassStruct.asp
  

  are links on how to create your own complex type/structure to achieve this and a simple web search on "complex number" and vb will reveal a number of third paty libraries which have this.

  As to why - I would say its a mathematical function which probably has limited general use and can be implemented if you really need it - .net framework contains a lot of the most widely used functionality but not all - and hence the market for component vendors.

  
  

• NIck Chance

  'Limited general use' is excluding a huge global community of people with mathematical/scientific backgrounds!

  I came across dnAnalytics, which appears to be slightly more rigorous than the vbHelper.

  http://www.dnanalytics.net/numerical/

  However, it is a bit of a pain having to validate and do Quality checks on any Third-party code.

  Thanks.

  
  

• Gustavo Carrazoni

  Would you do validation and quality checks if it was built in to VB ...and huge is relative...the scientific community have a vast array of tools, but VB has a far, far, broader user base: scientists are a minority.
  
  
• Complex Numbers