Re: standard representations

[Damien Neil]

On Wed, Dec 27, 2000 at 04:17:21PM -0500, Dan Sugalski wrote:
> The issue isn't support, it's efficiency. Since we're not worrying about 
> loss of precision (as we will be upconverting as needed) the next issue is 
> speed, and that's where we want things to be in a platform convenient size.

I think I've managed to argue myself around into a position I didn't
intend to take. :>

I'm not particularly arguing for Perl using any given size of
integer.  My initial point was just that you are allowed to assume
that there will be 16- and 32-bit ints available if you want them.
I'm a C standard weenie, and I tend to be picky about the language.

On a secondary note, I would prefer to be able to assume at least
32 bits worth of precision in a default Perl scalar -- if this
happens by magical upconversion into bigints, that's fine by me!

                    - Damien