Dan Sugalski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>BigInt and BigFloat are both pure perl, and as such their speed leaves a
>*lot* to be desired. Fixing that (at least yanking some of it to XS) has
>been on my ToDo list for a while, but other stuff keeps getting in the
>way... :)
My own "evolutionary" view of things is that if we did XS versions
of BigInt and BigFloat for perl5 we would learn some issues that might
affect Perl6. i.e. the vtable entries for "ints" may be influenced
by their use as building blocks for "floats".
For example the choice of radix in the BigInt case - should it be N*16-bits
or should we try and squeeze 32-bits - or to avoid issues with sign
should that be 15 or 31? (If we assume we use 2's complement then LS words
are treated as unsigned only MS word has sign bit(s).)
BigFloat could well build on BigInt for its "mantissa" and have another
int-of-some-kind as its exponent. We don't need to pack it tightly
so we should probably avoid IEEE-like hidden MSB. The size of exponent
is one area where "known range of int" is important.
--
Nick Ing-Simmons
