purescript-vectors

Fixed size polymorphic vectors

Documentation

• Module documentation is published on Pursuit.

Example

In a nutshell:

import Data.Vector2 (Vec(..))

va :: Vec Int
va = Vec 2 3

vb :: Vec Int
vb = Vec 7 6

vc :: Vec Int
vc = va + vb

Design decisions

Fixed sizes

Vectors are defined in separate fixed sized types. Currently for 2D and 3D vectors.

If you need an implementation that is polymorphic on the size of the vectors, you can check out the fast-vect package.

Polymorphic

Vectors in this library are polymorphic on the inner type. Thus you can use it as Vec Int Vec Number or any other type.

newtype PosInt = PosInt Int

type V = Vec PosInt

Even though there can also be something like Vec String most operations defined in here are constrained to types that define numeric instances such as Ring or Semiring.

There may be more specific types provided by other libraries. E.g. a VecNumber may provide operations which are Number specific. Moreover it could be implemented as JavaScript's Float64Array for better interoperablity with WebGL or similar. This is for instance how it's handled in Elm's linear-algebra library.

Just Vectors

The library only provide data types and functions for vectors of different sizes, as well as some conversions between them. There will be no matrices or other geometric shapes included in this library. So it will stay a lightweight dependency.

Naming

In many Programs either only 3D Vectors or only 2D Vectors are used. Thus all of the the vector data types are named equally.

import Data.Vector2 (Vec)
import Data.Vector2 as Vec

f :: Vec -> Vec -> Int
f (Vec x y) ...

If you need more than one in a module you can still import them qualified.

import Data.Vector2 as V2
import Data.Vector3 as V3

f :: V2.Vec -> V3.Vec -> Int
f (V2.Vec x y) ...

Vec was chosen as it's somewhere in the middle of "descriptive" and "short". Other options were Vector, Vect, V. Note that we could have provides a short infix alternative only for the 2D vector, so this was't provided at all for consistency reasons.

Exposed Constructor

Implementation is exposed. This allows easy and clean destructuring of vector components. However it does not allow to change the implementation behind the scenes to something that is maybe more performant. Clarity and convenience was a higher priority than optimization. However with a contemporary code optimizer this tradeoff is probably vastly reduced.

Inspired By

• Haskell's linear package
• Elm's linear-algebra package
• Elm's geometry package
• PureScript's sized-vectors
• PureScript's fast-vect