Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 10:31:06PM -0400, Aaron Sherman wrote:
My guess is that Rakudo will ultimately develop its own
arbitrary-precision integer representation, rather than trying to use
the BigInt that comes with Parrot. Also, IIRC, Parrot's BigInt
implementation only works on systems that have certain libraries
installed.
Well... that's true, but unlike some libraries out there, gmp isn't exactly a
difficult dependency to meet. [...]
I wasn't intending to imply that we would not be using the gmp library;
only that Parrot's current interface, build system, and implementation isn't
the way we're likely to do it.
I'm not saying "don't use Parrot bignums" for this. I'm saying that bignum
support isn't a high priority for the core at the moment, that when we
do implement bignums it probably won't use the Parrot-supplied BigInts (because
of other core changes in the pipeline), and that we'd likely entertain
patches if someone wanted to try to get Rakudo to work with Parrot's bignums
(but they'll likely get massively refactored with the new object system).
What is the difference between Parrot bignums and gmp? Could Parrot not just
use gmp to implement its bignums? -- Darren Duncan
