[EMAIL PROTECTED] scripsit:

> "The only advantage of fixnums over bignums is [performance and] memory 
> usage, and data exchange with those who already use fixnums. *Nothing* in 
> fixnums is more convenient or simpler than bignums, it's an additional 
> complexity layer."

Quite so.  Which is why the Q interpreter doesn't have fixnums.  (Q is
not Scheme, but it does share Scheme's numeric tower.)  Fixnum and flonum
performance are quite similar on modern machines when both are boxed
(everything is boxed in Q), and single-word GMP bignums aren't very
different from full-width fixnums.

-- 
Values of beeta will give rise to dom!          John Cowan
(5th/6th edition 'mv' said this if you tried    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
to rename '.' or '..' entries; see              [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html)

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