Re: [Chicken-users] Bignums in core

[Kon Lovett]

On Oct 2, 2009, at 9:01 PM, John Cowan wrote:

> 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.

While not "comfortable" with 10.0 as a file position is understandable  
does anyone really use '(exact? some-filpos)'?

I am not defending the lack of bignums in Chicken. Just trying to  
understand the need.

> --
> 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

Best Wishes,
Kon