On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:45:14 -0500, David Rush <[email protected]> wrote:
> In fact we don't need fixnums because we already have bignums. All we > really need is a standard way to get the modulus for the > maximally-efficient range of integer operations. Which might be several, or none at all. In my opinion, the fixnum/bignum split is obsolete and should never be exposed to the user. Deliberate points of underspecification are necessary for standards, but they should not be elevated into features. If program authors wish to perform arithmetic on small integers with a guarantee of performance, they should write their program expressively with the semantics they desire and use an implementation that will guarantee optimization of their program. If this is not possible in portable Scheme, then we really should be looking for the features that will enable this style of development. -- Brian Mastenbrook [email protected] http://brian.mastenbrook.net/ _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
