Re: integer overflow

[Stefan Monnier]

> read doesn't seem the right tool for this job; read is for parsing Lisp
> syntax.

I can partly agree with the feeling, but since writing a lexer&parser in
Elisp results in fairly poor performance, it's common to (ab)use the
Lisp reader when possible.

The use of bignums would probably be a generally better option than
floats, but noone has tried to solve this yet (there have been some
patches that add bignums, but they still require a fair bit of work).


        Stefan