Re: integer overflow

[Stefan Monnier]

>>> Can you summarize how it's supposed to work?
>> The change affects the Lisp reader: reading "536870912" or any larger
>> number now gives you a float Lisp object, instead of an integer Lisp
>> object (since there is no way to represent 536870912 or larger as
>> integers).  536870911 and below are still read as integers.
> What's the point of doing that?  I would much prefer if read would just
> raise an error.

There are many cases where it's important to read an integer from some
other program, so it's important to be able to read integers larger the
Elisp's largest fixnum (tho less so for integers larger than the
host system's natural "int").
Examples are file sizes, process ids, user ids, ...


        Stefan