From: "Antti Kurenniemi" 

"Geo"  wrote in message
news:43358c78$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>> Why not - it's just math, and not even very difficult at that. I don't
> know
>> ASP, but I think any scriptin/programming language should be able to do
> that
>> much math...
>
> ok but how does a scripting language do these sort of functions?

Check out this site for example: http://www.frick-cpa.com/tvom/TVOM_lead.asp


> I mean normally something like "sort" is a separate function
> from the scripting language so I would think complex math
> functions would be similar.

Complex schmomplex. Annyity calculations are far from complex. The reason
for "sort" (or anything similar) existing in many languages as
built-in (or in some core library) is that it's a real pain to re-invent
the algorithm every time you need to sort something. I think I can write 10
or so different sorting algorithms in ten minutes, but still I prefer to
use built-in functions if possible because it feels stupid to write the
same sorting code for the millionth time.


> So if you think about it, is a little wrapper dll like this all that much
> different from how scripting languages which do have complex math
> functions would do something like that? IOW, I'm not sure that if you
> can find a way to do it in straight asp you would be all that much
> better,

No, probably not better. By all means, use the external DLL if possible,
and if it's MS provided stuff I think it's safe to assume it's of
reasonable quality and contains no hidden "format everything"
code. I'm personally in the "do it yourself" group whenever
there's a slightest chance I don't know what the "other" code
does - I hate relying on things that I can't see (code).


> Security wise this may not be such a bad solution and performance
> wise it's probably got advantages over building complex functions in
> asp.

Maybe so, but again, these are way far from complex functions.


> My concern and the reason I posted the code was there was
> some other function in there that didn't appear to be math, it
> almost looked like a performance tweak or something along
> those lines.

Don't really know what that code is for, but it's nothing
"serious" - I mean, it's some really simple logic code, returning
a value based on some input parameter values.


Antti Kurenniemi

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