A polymorphic library for constructive solid geometry
John Davy, P. M. Dew · Journal of Functional Programming · 1995
Abstract Solid modelling using constructive solid geometry (CSG) includes many examples of stylised divide-and-conquer algorithms. We identify the sources of these recurrent patterns and describe a Geometric Evaluation Library (GEL) which captures them as higher-order functions. This library then becomes the basis of developing CSG applications quickly and concisely. GEL is currently implemented as a set of separately compiled modules in the pure functional language Hope+. We evaluate our work in terms of performance and general applicability. We also assess the benefits of the functional paradigm in this domain and the merits of programming with a set of higher-order functions.