Re: Using the GNU GMP Library for Bignums in Emacs

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > 
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Integer-Basics.html),
  > and they are documented to be pure value types, i.e. same-valued integers
  > are the same object (
  > 
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Equality-Predicates.html).
  > Especially the second property is widely used.

This will continue to be true for all the integers that are currently
representable.  If we document that, maybe we won't have a lot of
places to fix.

  > Or we could make them different types: the usual operators on
  > fixnums would return fixnums, and the usual operators on bignums
  > would return bignums. Mixing both would always return a bignum.

Having two data types for integers would be a nuisance for many Lisp
programs.  It won't simplify anything, and it won't reduce the changes
needed in Lisp programs because of bignums.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.