At 01:48 PM 12/27/00 -0800, Damien Neil wrote:
>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.
Fair enough. I'm looking at things from another angle, since perl's use of
C is an accident of implementation. :) I'm trying to make sure we don't
lock ourselves in--it may be handy (and probably likely) for bits of at
least some implementations of perl to be in other languages.
>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!
Keen then. I'd say we're set. :)
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
