On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:40:32 -0400, "Gay, Jerry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:Leopold Toetsch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > BigNums grow on demand. It depends on value and precision. >
can BigNum then start at sizeof(int)? overflow would auto-grow the BigNum to the appropriate size, and most integer math operations will keep space usage as low as possible.
in fact, then int is just a degenerate case of BigNum, one that doesn't grow and throws an exception instead. or, maybe that's the case already, i should probably read the docs.
~jerry
What is the most reasonable paradigm for scientific/high precision applications? It seems to me that this type of thing has been hashed out before, and it should be designed in a way that makes it attractive/sellable for scientists, engineers, etc. One handicap that Perl has (by reputation only) in the sciences is that it is not good for precision math. I know this is not true, and you all know this is not true, but the community(ies) at large do not know - they are stuck in the land of Fortran, and from my experience people are by-passing Perl for things like Python when they do venture out.
We're only talking about the behavior for the base parrot types. Individual languages can, and will, have different behaviors for their own base types.
This can be an issue in two spots:
1) If we want parrot's basic types to be sufficiently rich that people don't bother with other types (which is certainly a reasonable thing to think)
2) The default functions ought to be sensible enough so languages don't have to fill in too many slots of the MMD table.
I think that if we up-convert where necessary and have Undef do the right thing on assignment (that was detailed earlier, and I think it's specified sufficiently and sufficiently correctly :) we'll be covered.
Just out of curiosity, is BigNum like a "double" (16 bit) or is it just limited by the precision of the machine, i.e. 32 or 64 bit?
BigNum's an indefinite-precision floating-point number. -- Dan
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