[Chicken-users] Re: Bignums in core

[Thomas Bushnell BSG]

On Fri, 2009-10-02 at 19:20 -0700, Kon Lovett wrote:
> On Oct 2, 2009, at 10:17 AM, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 2009-10-02 at 00:30 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> >> Kon Lovett scripsit:
> >>
> >>> Possible is adding a int64_t heap type. But involves hitting every
> >>> piece of code that any extension of the core number system would.
> >>
> >> Indeed.  If we're going to do that, I'd rather go with core bignums
> >> after all, perhaps from LibTomMath (which is dedicated to the public
> >> domain by its author), and dispose of the issue once and for all.
> >
> > Something like this is surely my preference too.
> 
> Not sure what is desired. I am guessing the full numeric tower is the  
> real concern. If only large-ish integers then the current use of  
> integer flonum limit of +-9007199254740992 should be good for awhile.

There's no need to implement everything at once...

In this case, I'm saying that rather than accept the *wrong* argument
(inexact integers), we have a need for larger exact integers than we can
support at present, and the right thing to do is add larger exact
integers, not allow a function which should accept only exact integers
to start taking inexact ones.

Thomas