Re: [Chicken-users] Bignums in core

[John Cowan]

Kon Lovett scripsit:

> Not sure what is desired. I am guessing the full numeric tower is the  
> real concern. 

No, I see no need to smuggle the full tower in by the back door.
What I'd like to see is the Chicken core (FFI and all) migrated from
pure fixnum+flonum to fixnum+flonum+bignum, providing unlimited exact
integers plus IEEE double floats.  If even tiny Chibi Scheme can do that,
so can Chicken.  In fact, Chibi's routines are BSD-licensed and would
be easy to adapt to Chicken.

> integer flonum limit of +-9007199254740992 should be good for awhile.

Sure, in contexts where people feel comfortable using inexact numbers.
But having to use them for file positions is a kludge.

-- 
John Cowan   address@hidden  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Most languages are dramatically underdescribed, and at least one is
dramatically overdescribed.  Still other languages are simultaneously
overdescribed and underdescribed.  Welsh pertains to the third category.
        --Alan King